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Pessimal Algorithms

http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~yusu/courses/780/pessimal.pdf

by sentiental • 14 years ago

2 1 14 years ago

CS

cse.ohio-state.edu

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sentiental• 14 years ago

I'm just going to quote this early part of the document as it summarizes the goal of pessimal algorithms - to design a program to always get closer, but as slowly as possible.

"Of course, we can get very slow algorithms by adding spurious loops before the ﬁrst test of X against the Ai . However, such easy solutions are unacceptable because any fool can see that the algorithm is just wasting time. Therefore, we must look for an algorithm that does indeed progress steadily towards its stated goal even though it may have very little enthusiasm for (or even a manifest aversion to) actually getting there."

Zeno would be pleased.

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