What's New - December, 2005
[Home]
December 31, 2005: Two more minor updates to close out the year:
A viewer found another bug in Intersecting Lines. Line segments which are co-linear (part of the same line) and where one line segment was entirely contained in the other were not identified as intersecting. Fixed now.
While correcting a typo in our Prime Factors 1 program, I noticed that I had promised a second version solving three specific prime number/factoring problems. I've added solutions for two of them today. The third program ("Find 10 digit primes with most 0's, 1's, 2's, 3's .... 9's") was tougher and a version may appear soon in Project Euler, a site with lots of interesting and challenging programming problems. I'll publish my solution here a month or two after that.
December
19, 2005: Time for one more program before we head out
for Christmas with grandkids. Here's Dice
Odds, that calculates probabilities for rolling combinations
of dice, either matched sets or sum of dots. It estimates
probabilities by simulating a million throws and counting
outcomes. I'll add the theoretical results when either I
get more time, get smarter, or get some help from
viewers.
If you
celebrate Christmas, have a happy one!
(If you don't, surprise someone by giving them a present anyway! )
December 16. 2005: I've been resurrecting the old expert system this week. My long time engineer buddy is considering an oil industry consulting job and may have need for it. Maintenance costs for companies with lots of large rotating equipment (motors, pumps, etc.) are a big expense item. A system that can help intelligently diagnose vibration problems is valuable enough that it helped us both take early retirement. It just happened to be easier for me to keep playing with computers at home than it was for him to find 20,000 hp motors to fix. I think he's missing it.
I recently started getting statistical summary reports about DFF again. It amazes me at the geographical distribution of our viewers. A typical day will have a couple of thousand hits from 80 to 100 different countries with about 40% from the USA.
December
10, 2005: Another user request this week, from a fellow who
wanted an implementation of Keno,
a casino game somewhat like an "Instant
Lottery". The mathematics of the game are
interesting. "If I select N numbers from a pool of 80, what
is the probability that R of my N numbers will match numbers in
a draw of 20 chosen randomly from the 80?"
I think I know -- you can
too.
December 2, 2005: "Help, I have X and Y values in two list boxes and I want to chart the data. I am totally lost about how to do this!" That was the gist of the request that led to today's TChartDemo2 addition to the Beginners' page in our Delphi Techniques section.