Re: golf answer
Hi all,
Just discovering this board while preparing for round 2 of Model 2014. In case anyone else came across it, I thought I'd share some thoughts on the solutions 2013 excel golf challenge and to the challenge itself, as I was there.
I believe many of the solutions presented can be improved upon.
(1) @notmcgee: Your solution is almost exactly the same as the one I came up with, but you can improve it slightly, by removing the 0, leaving a length of 38 characters.
=MAX(MIN($F18,H$17)-MAX($E18,H$16)+1,)
=max(min($f18,h$17)-max(h$16,$e18)+1,0)
(2) As some present at the competition, I would like to say that it was very clear what the challenge was and the intent of the rules, and that Peter's solution, while shorter, was not a valid one as it depended on the values entered into the inputs. While I came up with a slightly better solution that the contestants while at the competition, it wasn't until afterwards that I came up with what I believe is the best solution: =OFFSET($I$30,9-ROW(),9-COLUMN())
Length: 33 characters
This solution does have one trick, which is that it uses a box that is outside the input grid in order to slightly shorten the formula.
(3) This too is one where I had a better solution than the contestants while at the competition, but not nearly as good as one I came up with after the competition. And that even that was beat by a colleague of mine, who improved it by 1 character. His solution is:
{=SUM(N(E20:S59^2>100))}
Length: 22 characters
(4) I have the same solution that Nicholas Favre has, namely:
=MAX(INT((H$17-$E19)/$F19/360+1),)
Length: 34 characters
As someone present at the competition, I would like to say that I loved the idea of this challenge and I thought it was very exciting, lots of fun, and clearly challenged the minds of the competitors. I especially liked that as a observer, I was able to play along with the competitors in my head. In response to other people's comments, I would like to emphasize that it was very clear what the challenge was and the intent of the rules. It was also clearly tricky to review results quickly. That said, it didn't feel like the solutions were well thought out in advance, and so even there, some of us were able to come up with better solutions than the ones presented.
Thanks again for putting together such a great competition!!!
