Problem Solving Homework

• You may have played quite a few logic puzzle games.
• One of the classic games of this kind is Tetris.
• Cut Block Puzzle is similar in that it requires you to think logically when place a number in a grid.
• First step in Problem Solving is to understand the problem, which means, you need to know the rules(process), the input you can have and the expected outcomes(output).
• There are two rules that must hold of a completed cut block puzzle.
  • Each area marked out by darker lines must contain the numbers from 1 up to the number of squares in the area. For example, the top most area in the first puzzle below consists of 5 squares so those squares must be filled with the numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 with no repeated numbers. If the area has two squares, then it must be filled with the numbers 1 and 2.
  • No number can be next to the same number in any direction, whether horizontally, vertically or diagonally. So in the grid below, the fact that there is a 4 on the side means there cannot be a 4 in any of the 5 squares surrounding it.
• Here is an example with its solution and then a larger cut block puzzle to try.

Your task:

• Solve the below Cut Block Puzzle.
• Using a sheet of paper or a word document for your work
• Describe briefly on how you approach the problem
• Once finished, upload to www.bournetolearn.com or hand in to your teacher your solution along with your note.

• Search for data or information happens everyday.
• Examples of search may include small task of find an item you just paid for from a receipt with all the items you just purchased to big task of police force searches for suspects from possibly millions of persons.
• To search an item from a receipt is easy for a human but search for a suspect from millions of others is much much harder for a human.
• There are many algorithms exist for search, some are better than others.
• Suppose you are given a list of items as below:

Egg 
Milk
Bread
Chocolate
Orange juice
Oil
Chips
Tomato
Sparkling water
Apple
Lime

• If a list is short, we can quickly scan the list, either find or not find the item.
• But if the list if very long, what you do? we may need to scan the list one item after another from the beginning.

Your tasks:

1. Use pen and paper, word or this website to create a flowchart of your algorithm on how to search for any item from a list of any length.
2. Look at the list given above, try to suggest a way to improve the efficiency of your search algorithm.