Blogger's Block

So apparently instead of blogging by ranting about something, when you don't have anything to rant about, you can follow the Blogger's Block questions!

What's something new you learned in class?
- Well sorting is not really a new concept, it's taught in high school no problem.  Especially the simple sorts quicksort and selectionsort.  However, I did find the timing of sorts interesting.  I learned the hierarchy works based on whether a function is greater than the next in terms of increase rate, and that in computer terms, lg n is used (i.e. log base 2).  I want to learn more about, so I've heard, a concept called P-completion and NP-completion.  It has something to do with this?

What's something you enjoyed this week in class?
- My coffee.
- Kidding.  I enjoy anything new I learn.  Like above.

What was some achievement you did this week and how did it relate to compsci?
- So I run this contest called NACLO (a computational linguistics contest) and they had a problem in their most recent round about free state automatons (transducers).  Whereas I cannot discuss the problem, I can relate the concept to the assigment 2 part 2 "is_regex" function.
My solution to approaching the problem was to figure out, in FSA format, how to generate a regex string that makes sense.
Define value = ['0','1','2','e'] and bin_op = ['|', '.'].
Like creating a FSA, you can only move from some states to another.
( -> ( or value.
value -> bin_op, *, end, )
bin_op -> value, (
* -> ), end, bin_op
) -> *, bin_op, ), end
start -> (, value
This would eliminate most results.  Then there are just a few more rules to put in.
( -> ____ bin_op ____ -> )
start + -> (, value
start + value -> end or *
bin_op + value -> *, )
In any case, I just found it interesting how the contest I was proctoring and the problem I was working on both had the same concept.   Also the program worked.  Yay.

Yeah - hopefully I'll be back to ranting soon.   Probably about sorting.