Programming challenges

[hurufu]

There is an outstanding data visualization challenge: https://new.mta.info/article/mta-open-data-challenge. Prolog being a unique language based on logic is a good fit for deducing interesting consequences from a data set. If someone is ambitious enough to participate, you can try 🚀

[jjtolton]

uuugh why does the deadline have to be before the meetup (ಠ⌣ಠ)

[hurufu]

I didn't want to start new thread, let's make it a general programming challenge thread.

I think Prolog is the best fit for this one: https://berghain.challenges.listenlabs.ai/. It is about probabilistic reasoning. The prize is a ticket to Berghain if you are into such things :).

[jjtolton]

uuugh why does the deadline always have to be before the meetup (ಠ⌣ಠ)

jk (kinda)

# Berghain Challenge
You're the bouncer at a night club. Your goal is to fill the venue with N=1000 people while satisfying constraints like "at least 40% Berlin locals", or "at least 80% wearing all black". People arrive one by one, and you must immediately decide whether to let them in or turn them away. Your challenge is to fill the venue with as few rejections as possible while meeting all minimum requirements.

Interesting... is this really a programming problem tho or more of a statistics problem?

[hurufu]

You get probability of attributes and correlations between them, then you need to invent an optimal strategy – this is pure statistics, but then you have to make decisions on what you have already – that's programming :) idk. I haven't thought much about that problem, but I have couple of ideas. Algorithm can be kinda simple (my first instinct was to use Markov chains and Problog that's why I posted it here), but I don't know if it can outperform GPT-5.

[jjtolton]

m Algorithm can be kinda simple (my first instinct was to use Markov chains and Problog that's why I posted it here), but I don't know if it can outperform GPT-5.

That's exactly the approach I would take. The trick would be to find an optimal markov state machine that guarantees demographic characteristics. If there is no closed form solution I'm sure the solution could be approached iteratively.

Hmm. Not sure this counts as a programming problem but it does sound fun.