aralib

Now I really want to learn ray tracing (and computer graphics in general).

It seems that the commenter was saying that the most impressive students were from those three schools, not that most (or even many) of the interns at Microsoft were from those three schools.

This seems much worse that the original excerpt you posted.

Your solution is not correct. For example, if the counterfeit pile is initially measured with one coin and Delta is -1 (29 modulo 30), you set D1 to 1, but D2 will be 28, 29, or 30. You cannot determine Delta or the counterfeit pile with such values of D1 and D2 using your algorithm.

It's certainly not the case that D{1,2} <= 20 as your comments suggest, and you seem to realize this by checking for D1 >= 25. Also, you ignore the case of 20 < D1 < 25.

Note that Delta is strictly between -5 and 5, so it can't be equal to -5 or 5.

There is actually a really elegant solution to this problem. I'll send you an email so you can let me know if you'd like a hint.

hm.. "the problem of having prisoners live" doesn't sound right.

Though fierarul's comment leads to a natural question. The original comment explaining the graph is really necessary for the link to make sense. Explaining the graph in a comment seems to break the (apparent) convention of submissions being self-contained.

I thought the reason for disallowing both a URL and text in a submission was to avoid this. Though, if a submission that requires a comment is acceptable, why not allow submitting both a URL and text?

Tennis is not about winning individual points, but about stringing points together to win games (and sets). I find that first-serve faults tend to happen a lot in the same game. I think employing this "two first-serves" strategy and double-faulting a few times in a game could cost you a break of serve and lose you the set. Winning more points on average over the course of the entire match doesn't necessarily help.