OpenEuphoria

Re: Only scored 0.2787 in Al Z's circle packing contest :)

• Posted by Juergen Luethje <j.lue at gmx.de> Nov 11, 2005
• 464 views

Al Getz wrote:

> I decided to test my strategy of different diameter circle packing out by
> submitting a test set in Al Zimmerman's Circle Packing Contest.  I had
> originally done some circle packing before and discovered a few facts
> about it, but everything was done with circles ALL of the same diameter
> because it was intended for a very practical use, so everything had to
> be changed.  The symmetry that exists with circles all of the same
> size disappears when the circle radii are all different.  This presented
> a more or less new problem to be solved, which i think i've made progress
> on.
> In order to test this theory i submitted a set to be 'scored' by the
> 40 digit scorer used on AZ's contest site for circle packing.
> To my dismay, or should i say "great dismay" (hee hee) this set only
> scored 0.2787 out of a possible 1.0000 !  This is of course, wayyyy off!
> Not only that, the 'scorer' tried to scale the set by something like
> 2.99999 or whatever when the scale i was using was 1.0000 !
> 
> So what the heck happened???
> 
> Well, <chuckle> when a set is submitted for scoring the radii must appear
> in *ORDER* from 1 to N !!! Now, why this is so is beyond me, except that
> it makes it *easier* for the scoring program to compute the results!
> Geometrically, it doesnt matter, but to the scorer, it DOES, so let this
> be a warning to others that want to try the circle packing contest:
> Make sure your radii are in the correct order or you'll get a very
> nasty score :)

I think that should be mentioned on the contest's website!

<snip>

Did you use your "vibration mechanism"?

How about simulating a rotating lottery machine (2 dimensional, of
course)
<http://www.stern.de/standard/popup_neu.html?id=545423&bildint=0&img=%2F_content%2F54%2F54%2F545423%2Flottofee500_500.jpg&cred=Martin+Oeser%2FDDP&width=500&height=375&bgcol=%23FFE3CF&nv=pp&navid=81>

Just another idea, trying to avoid thinking about the underlying
geometry. 

Regards,
   Juergen