Problem 539. Fun Race

Created by AMITAVA BISWAS

Solve Later

Given two unary functions foo and goo.
Check whether foo(0) runs faster than goo(0).
Output 1 if foo is faster, otherwise output 2.
Please give the answer within 1/5 seconds.

Solve

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Last solution submitted on May 17, 2019

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Richard Zapor on 15 Jun 2012

Very entertaining puzzle.
Hint to the frustrated, as I was:
This is a "noise" exclusion problem. The 1-sigma uncertainty in the time measurement is greater than the "true" time delta between foo and goo.

The test suite method is also vey well executed.

Solution Comments

Solution 202651

1 Comment

1 Comment

Claudio Gelmi on 11 Feb 2013

Indeed the solution is random...

Solution 118176

1 Comment

1 Comment

Aurelien Queffurust on 24 Jul 2012

since tic toc didn't give me results, I tried the cody size approach

Solution 68836

2 Comments

2 Comments

Aurelien Queffurust on 24 Jul 2012

I tried a lot of times this solution without sucess

James on 20 Feb 2013

As did I, even with 10,000 iterations in the loop. My problem was that gamma took longer than sign did, despite the test suite saying it shouldn't. After four or five tries, I had to add an ugly hack that checked if foo was gamma.

Good to know this method does occasionally work, though...

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Problem 539. Fun Race

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Last 200 Solutions

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Problem 539. Fun Race

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Last 200 Solutions

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