Very simply, what is tail-call optimization? More specifically, what are some small code snippets where it could be applied, and where not, with an explanation of why? 10 s 10 Tail-call optimization is where you are able to avoid allocating a new stack frame for a function because the calling function will simply return the … Read more
I have gone through Google and Stack Overflow search, but nowhere I was able to find a clear and straightforward explanation for how to calculate time complexity. What do I know already? Say for code as simple as the one below: char h=”y”; // This will be executed 1 time int abc = 0; // … Read more
How do I calculate the distance between two points specified by latitude and longitude? For clarification, I’d like the distance in kilometers; the points use the WGS84 system and I’d like to understand the relative accuracies of the approaches available. 48 s 48
Whilst starting to learn lisp, I’ve come across the term tail-recursive. What does it mean exactly? 3 31
I have recently stumbled upon the game 2048. You merge similar tiles by moving them in any of the four directions to make “bigger” tiles. After each move, a new tile appears at random empty position with a value of either 2 or 4. The game terminates when all the boxes are filled and there … Read more
I am learning about Big O Notation running times and amortized times. I understand the notion of O(n) linear time, meaning that the size of the input affects the growth of the algorithm proportionally…and the same goes for, for example, quadratic time O(n2) etc..even algorithms, such as permutation generators, with O(n!) times, that grow by … Read more
Yesterday I was pairing the socks from the clean laundry and figured out the way I was doing it is not very efficient. I was doing a naive search — picking one sock and “iterating” the pile in order to find its pair. This requires iterating over n/2 * n/4 = n2/8 socks on average. As … Read more
I’d prefer as little formal definition as possible and simple mathematics. 4 43
