Talk:100 prisoners

Wikipedia link?

Despite the heading on the task page claiming otherwise, there does not appear to be a wikipedia entry for "100 prisoners" --Thundergnat (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Fixed.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 19:04, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. (Although I'm in two minds - maybe wikipedia should just be another reference)? --Paddy3118 (talk) 20:40, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, if that's where you obtained the description, then leave it as is;   but Wiki's description is more more dire   (with a penalty of execution for all if any prisoner fails).   Brutal.     Not   G   rated.     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 20:55, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

big speed up

Thanks to (userid)   Craigd   (using zkl),   his observation/optimization of:       if one prisoner fails, they all do.

A big decrease in time used.

It's programmers like Craigd that make me say:       Damn!     Why didn't   I   think of that ?!?!     -- Gerard Schildberger (talk) 20:28, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

That's in the Python too; the first failing prisoner breaks out of the for prisoner in ... loop. --Paddy3118 (talk) 20:48, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

Test at 10 prisoners too?

Would it be worth asking for a test run at 10 prisoners as well (as I did in the Perl 6 entry) to verify that the logic is correct for random selection? Right now, with 100 prisoners the random portion could be just be: "Fail" and it would be only be wrong 7.89e-29 percent of the time. If tested with 10, the prisoners should be pardoned ~.097 percent of the time. Though I see that the task has already been promoted out of draft after... ~18 whole hours? What's the rush? --Thundergnat (talk) 22:45, 5 November 2019 (UTC)