Celebrating 1 Month of Algorithmic Posts

Let's celebrate with a new proposal for everyone.

Woo hoo!

Algorithmically Speaking has been around for a month now and the reception has been better than I expected. It looks like we are a lot of people that love nerding out about algorithms after all!

To celebrate this, I thought of a new type of post that I think all the algorithm lovers in this community (that is everyone) will enjoy.

Let’s get started!

---

A New Proposal

My idea is to start creating posts not only focused on theoretical knowledge but on practical challenges as well.

You might have noticed how I always leave a couple of questions/problems at the end of every post to try to encourage people to think about the topics that I explain.

So far, I have not received any answer for any of the problems. This is why I’m introducing a brand new way to interact that I think will benefit us all.

I will call them Interactive Challenges.

Enter: Interactive Challenges

Look at the problem I will propose next:

This is an interesting algorithmic problem, believe it or not. I can assure you that, given the constraints present in the problem, it is always possible to find a solution.

Right now, let’s focus on this particular instance.

Of course, I would like you to try to solve this problem and send me your answers. But how? That has been the main problem from the beginning, and I have a solution for you all.

I craft these puzzles using Excalidraw, an online tool that allows one to create drawings, sketches, and diagrams. But the best of all is that it permits to share projects so others can modify them and make them their own.

For example, here is the previous problem for you to edit on the Excalidraw platform.

Do you know what this means? No more boring problems in the form of plain text!

From now on, every challenge I want to propose to you will be in the form of an Excalidraw project that you will be able to modify and share with me after you have solved it.

How to Share a Solution

After you have finished solving a problem on Excalidraw, just go to the sidebar on the left, click Save to…, and then click the option Export to Link.

After the link has been generated, you can send it to me in any way you want and I will have access to see your answers.

Ways of sharing the link could be by posting it in a comment to any post, or just sending an email to albexl@substack.com.

This straightforward process will allow us to interact more and in a much more dynamic way than before. Right now I’m in the process of creating these visual puzzles for every question/problem that I have proposed until now.

A Note for Paid Subscribers

One of the great benefits of Excalidraw is its live collaboration mode.

Right now I’m considering the option to give live sessions to the paid subscribers of Algorithmically Speaking and solve some of the proposed problems together using this collaboration mode.

Other options for the paid members could be having access to the full archive of crafted puzzles or even having some custom puzzles created for them.

Let me know if any of that seems like a good idea.

Give it a try

Don’t forget to try to solve the tiling problem proposed above and share your solutions with me and with the community.

I will mention the authors of the first 10 correct solutions in the next post.

Here’s the link to the problem, once again: Tiling Problem.

See you soon!