| author | Jared Siirila |
|---|---|
| title | Programming problem tips and tools |
--
Solving programming problems is a lot like solving math word problems
--
Many of the same strategies can be used
--
Lets revisit math word problems for a moment
--
--
Read it carefully
What is being asked?
Mark up the relevant information (ignore irrelevant information)
Break it down in to the individual steps
--
There was a nest of fish eggs in Brookfield River; 302 of the eggs hatched and 114 of them didn't. How many eggs were there in total?
total suggests addition
Relevant numbers are 302 and 114
--
Newberry Publishing needs to ship 48 new math textbooks to a high school. If each box can hold 8 textbooks, how many boxes will the publisher need?
Relevant values are 8 and 48
Each could mean multiplication or division, it requires careful reading to determine it is division in this case
--
Erik saved $21 in March. He saved $19 in April and $30 in May. Then Erik spent $38 on a keyboard. How much money does Erik have left?
spent and left suggest subtraction
saved suggest addition
relevant numbers are $21, $19, $30, and $38
--
Programming problems tend to follow the same rules for how to solve them
--
Read them carefully
What is being asked?
What information is relevant?
What information is irrelevant or misleading?
Identify the tools you might use to solve the problem
--
- each
- every
- iterate
- count
- all
- list
All of these words tend to indicate that some form of iteration will need to be used
That could be a for loop, a while loop, the foreach method, or something else
--
- compare
- if
- only
- when
- tests
These tend to indicate some sort of comparison
Usually, that is an if/else statement, but it could be a the condition for a loop or some other comparison
--
- returns
- outputs
- input
- takes
- arguments
These tend to indicate use of a function or method
--
--
Given a list of numbers, return the largest number in the list
--
Given two numbers, return true if they have the same value and false otherwise
--
Given a list of prices, compute the total of all of the prices
--
Given a number, return an array of each digit in the number
--
Given two lists, return a new list that has all of the items from each list alternated
e.g. [1, 2, 3] and ['a', 'b', 'c'] would return [1, 'a', 2, 'b', 3, 'c']