I am looking for any direction on how to implement the process below, you should not need to understand much at all about poker.
Below is a grid of possible two-card combinations.
Pocket pairs in blue, suited cards in yellow and off-suited in red.
Essentially there is a slider under the matrix which selects a percentage of possible combinations of two cards which a player could be dealt. However, you can see that it moves in a sort of linear fashion, towards the "better" cards.
These selections are also able to be parsed from strings e.g AA-88,AKo-AJo,KQo,AKs-AJs,KQs,QJs,JTs is 8.6% of the matrix.
I've looked around but cannot find questions about the specific selection process. I am not looking for "how to create this grid" or , more like how would I go about the selection process based on the sliding percentage. I am primarily a JavaScript developer but snippets in any language are appreciated, if applicable.
My initial assumptions are that there is some sort of weighting involved i.e. (favoured towards pairs over suited and suited over non-suited) or could it just be predetermined and I'm overthinking this?
In my opinion there should be something along the lines of "grouping(s)" AND "a subsequent weighting" process. It should also be customisable for the user to provide an optimal experience (imo).
For example, if you look at the below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_hold_%27em_starting_hands#Sklansky_hand_groups
These are/were standard hand rankings created back in the 1970s/1980s however since then, hand selection has become much more complicated. These kind of groupings have changed a lot in 30 years so poker players will want a custom user experience here.
But lets take a basic preflop scenario.
Combinations:- pairs = 6, suited = 4, nonsuited = 12
1 (AA:6, KK:6, QQ:6, JJ:6, AKs:4) = 28combos
2 (AQs:4, TT:6, AK:16, AJs:4, KQs:4, 99:6) = 40
3 (ATs:4, AQ:16, KJs:4, 88:6, KTs:4, QJs:4) = 38
....
9 (87s:4, QT:12, Q8s:4, 44:6, A9:16, J8s:4, 76s:4, JT:16) = 66
Say for instance we only reraise the top 28/1326 of combinations (in theory there should be some deduction here but for simplicity let's ignore that). We are only 3betting or reraising a very very obvious and small percentage of hands, our holdings are obvious at around 2-4% of total hands. So a player may want to disguise their reraise or 3bet range with say 50% of the weakest hands from group 9. As a basic example.
Different decision trees and game theory can be used with "range building" so a simple ordered list may not be suitable for what you're trying to achieve. depends on your programs purpose.
That said, if you just looking to build an ordered list then you could just take X% of hands that players open with, say average is 27% and run a hand equity calculator simulation tweaking the below GitHub to get different hand rankings. https://github.com/andrewprock/pokerstove
Theres also some lists here at the bottom this page.
http://www.propokertools.com/help/simulator_docs
Be lucky!
Foreword: I am aware there is another question like this, however mine has very specific restrictions. I have done my best to make this question applicable to many, as it is a generic grid issue, but if it still does not belong here, then I am sorry, and please be nice about it. I have found in the past stackoverflow to be a very picky and hostile environment to question askers, but I'm hoping that was just a bad couple people.
Goal(abstract): Check all connected grid squares in a 3D grid that are of the same type and touching on one face.
Goal(specific/implementation): Create a "fill bucket" tool in Minecraft with command blocks.
Knowledge of Minecraft not really necessary to answer, this is more of an algorithm question, and I will be staying away from Minecraft specifics.
Restrictions: I can do this in code with recursive functions, but in Minecraft there are some limitations I am wondering if are possible to get around. 1: no arrays(data structure) permitted. In Minecraft I can store an integer variable and do basic calculations with it (+,-,*,/,%(mod),=,==), but that's it. I cannot dynamically create variables or have the program create anything with a name that I did not set out ahead of time. I can do "IF" and "OR" statements, and everything that derives from them. I CANNOT have multiple program pointers - that is, I can't have things like recursive functions, which require a program to stop executing, execute itself from beginning to end, and then resume executing where it was - I have minimal control over the program flow. I can use loops and conditional exits (so FOR loops). I can have a marker on the grid in 3D space that can move regardless of the presence of blocks (I'm using an armour stand, for those who know), and I can test grid squares relative to that marker.
So say my grid is full of empty spaces only. There are separate clusters of filled squares in opposite corners, not touching each other. If I "use" my fillbucket tool on one block / filled grid square, I want it to use a single marker to check and identify all the connected grid squares - basically, I need to be sure that it traverses the entire shape, all the nooks and crannies, but not the squares that are not connected to that shape. So in the end, one of the two clusters, from me only selecting a single square of it, will be erased/replaced by another kind of block, without affecting the other blocks around it.
Again, apologies if this doesn't belong here. And only answer this if you WANT to tackle the challenge - it's not important or anything, I just want to do this. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. Or if you can solve this problem for a 2D grid, that would be helpful as well, as I could possibly extend that to work for 3D.
Thank you, and if I get nobody degrading me for how I wrote this post or the fact that I did, then I will consider this a success :)
With help from this and other sources, I figured it out! It turns out that, since all recursive functions (or at least most of them) can be written as FOR loops, that I can make a recursive function in Minecraft. So I did, and the general idea of it is as follows:
For explaining the program, you may assuming the situation is a largely empty grid with a grouping of filled squares in one part of it, and the goal is to replace the kind of block that that grouping is made of with a different block. We'll say the grouping currently consists of red blocks, and we want to change them to blue blocks.
Initialization:
IDs - A objective (data structure) for holding each marker's ID (score)
numIDs - An integer variable for holding number of IDs/markers active
Create one marker at selected grid position with ID [1] (aka give it a score of 1 in the "IDs" objective). This grid position will be a filled square from which to start replacing blocks.
Increment numIDs
Main program:
FOR loop that goes from 1 to numIDs
{
at marker with ID [1], fill grid square with blue block
step 1. test block one to the +x for a red block
step 2. if found, create marker there with ID [numIDs]
step 3. increment numIDs
[//repeat steps 1 2 and 3 for the other five adjacent grid squares: +z, -x, -z, +y, and -y]
delete stand[1]
numIDs -= 1
subtract 1 from every marker's ID's, so that the next marker to evaluate, which was [2], now has ID [1].
} (end loop)
So that's what I came up with, and it works like a charm. Sorry if my explanation is hard to understand, I'm trying to explain in a way that might make sense to both coders and Minecraft players, and maybe achieving neither :P
I need to group addresses given their distances.
Let's say I have a list of 8 addresses. 5 in NYC and 3 in New Jersey. From those 5 in NYC 3 are close to the MET and 2 to the WTC. Those 3 in NJ would form one group, those close to the MET another and also those close to the WTC.
I 'd like to send this address list and get the closest to each other, grouped. Is there any API from Google Maps or Bing Maps that would do that? If not, would you have any suggestions on how to solve this?
At the question below lots of ways to calculate distance are mentioned, but I wonder if is there something already created (and available) from these big companies. I wouldn't like to recalculate every address in the list every time a new one is added.
How to group latitude/longitude points that are 'close' to each other?
Also, there's another problem that was not addressed at the aforementioned question... One address can be close to a group and several other groups. For instance:
In this example I've highlighted at least 4 groups. B forms one "close group" with A/C, but also with C/F, A/E/G and E/F/D/H. So I'd also like to know those variables. To which group the address is closer, or at least I though about limiting groups by the amount of members. In my example, using my suggested approach, B would be part of either the RED or BLACK group.
You can try a quadkey and exploit it visit nearby points firstly, similar to a space filling curve. Treat the points as a binary and interleave it. Treat the index as base-4 number. Then sort the numbers.
I'm not sure if the title is right but...
I want to animate (with html + canvas + javascript) a section of a road with a given density/flow/speed configuration. For that, I need to have a "source" of vehicles in one end, and a "sink" in the other end. Then, a certain parameter would determine how many vehicles per time unit are created, and their (constant) speed. Then, I guess I should have a "clock" loop, to increment the position of the vehicles at a given frame-rate. Preferrably, a user could change some values in a form, and the running animation would update accordingly.
The end result should be a (much more sophisticated, hopefully) variation of this (sorry for the blinking):
Actually this is a very common problem, there are thousands of screen-savers that use this effect, most notably the "star field", which has parameters for star generation and star movement. So, I believe there must be some "design pattern", or more widespread form (maybe even a name) for this algoritm. What would solve my problem would be some example or tutorial on how to achieve this with common control flows (loops, counters, ifs).
Any idea is much appreciated!
I'm not sure of your question, this doesn't seem an algorithm question, more like programming advice. I have a game which needs exactly this (for monsters not cars), this is what I did. It is in a sort of .Net psuedocode but similar stuff exists in other environments.
If you are running an animation by hand, you essentially need a "game-loop".
while (noinput):
timenow = getsystemtime();
timedelta = timenow - timeprevious;
update_object_positions(timedelta);
draw_stuff_to_screen();
timeprevious = timenow;
noinput = check_for_input()
The update_object_positions(timedelta) moves everything along timedelta, which is how long since this loop last executed. It will run flat-out redrawing every timedelta. If you want it to run at a constant speed, say once every 20 mS, you can stick in a thread.sleep(20-timedelta) to pad out the time to 20mS.
Returning to your question. I had a car class that included its speed, lane, type etc as well as the time it appears. I had a finite number of "cars" so these were pre-generated. I held these in a list which I sorted by the time they appeared. Then in the update_object_position(time) routine, I saw if the next car had a start time before the current time, and if so I popped cars off the list until the first (next) car had a start time in the future.
You want (I guess) an infinite number of cars. This requires only a slight variation. Generate the first car for each lane, record its start time. When you call update_object_position(), if you start a car, find the next car for that lane and its time and make that the next car. If you have patterns that you want to repeat, generate the whole pattern in one go into a list, and then generate a new pattern when that list is emptied. This would also work well in terms of letting users specify variable pattern flows.
Finally, have you looked at what happens in real traffic flows as the volume mounts? Random small braking activities cause cars behind to slightly over-react, and as the slight over-reactions accumulate it turns into cars completely stopping a kilometre back up the road. Its quite strange, and so might be a great effect in your wallpaper/screensaver whatever as well as being a proper simulation.
Closed. This question is opinion-based. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by editing this post.
Closed 4 years ago.
The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 10 months ago and left it closed:
Original close reason(s) were not resolved
Improve this question
In a sorted table, it's common to have an up or a down arrow indicating the sort style. However, I'm having some trouble determining which direction the arrow should point. In an ASC sort, characters are sorted 1-9A-Za-z. Should the arrow point up or down?
I've found implementations of both on the web, so that didn't help me much: Up and Down (you have to create the table first).
Is there a hard and fast rule for this? I find myself able to justify both implementations. Which method do you use? Which is more intuitive to you and why?
Edit: Some of you have suggested alternate implementations like rising bars or having letters with an arrow indicating sort direction. Great suggestions. I'm definitely open to other options. The less ambiguous, the better. It might be picky, but I'd really like there to be minimal or no confusion on the part of the user.
Edit: I ended up going with the rising and falling bars for now. It's not standard, but seems less ambiguous than the triangles. The current sort column shows three bars, small to large (left to right) for ASC, the opposite for DESC. Other sortable columns have no bars by default, but hovering over any sortable column heading (including the current) shows bars depicting how the table will be sorted if that column heading is clicked.
I don't think of them as arrows, but as a visual mnemonic of the current state. So, showing a triangle pointing down shows descending order. It is visually in line with the icon with the largest item (base of the triangle) at the top of the list and the smallest (point of the triangle) at the bottom.
I've always went with the following:
Ascending -- Arrow pointing up
Descending -- Arrow pointing down
In my opinion, the visual representation of the arrow pointing up/down most accurately explains the sort order.
I’ve done usability tests on this. There does not appear to be a consistent interpretation among users on what the arrows mean. I seem to recall that even each user was not consistent, thinking the arrow down meant ascending in one case and descending in another. I tried arrows to left and right (“forward” versus “backwards” sort), but they failed to be interpreted consistently too. I tried showing current state and showing the state that would result. Neither worked.
What did work was a schematic text depiction of the sort order: “A..Z” and “Z..A” for alpha, “1..9” and “9..1” for numeric, “1..12” and “12..1” for dates (the usability test used mm/dd/yy date format).
Show this text as read-only indicating the current state. Place a button beside the text to set or swap the sort order.
Didn’t try the rising/falling bar icon, but I expect it can run into difficulties where “bigger” is ambiguous. For example, is an older date in the past bigger (longer ago) or smaller (closer to Time 0) than a more recent date? Is Priority 1 bigger or smaller than Priority 2? Grade A bigger or smaller than Grade B? For that matter, who, other than geeks, thinks that “Zuschlag” is vastly bigger than “Abbott”? Not that I’m taking this personally, of course.
For some reason I feel is always backwards. For me the down pointing arrow/triangle should represent the way I usually read things (from top to bottom -> from a to z) and the up pointing arrow is backwards from the way I read things (from z to a). But that's just me, since most popular UIs (Mac, Windows, etc. etc.) use it the other way, they must know something :).
In any case consistency with what the user is used to is a good option.
My favorite is actually the way that e.g. Excel handles it -- don't use an arrow, but rather a custom icon with
A |
Z V
for ascending sort and
Z |
A V
for descending sort. Nobody will ever wonder which way you're sorting.
Now, if you can't use a custom icon but rather need a printable character, I'd say people are about as likely to be confused by either one. Windows uses the "small part of arrow corresponds to smaller value" for Explorer, which is to say that ascending sort points up. But plenty of other sources assume that the base of the arrow starts at the lowest value and points in the direction of the sort, which frankly makes as much sense as anything else. In other words, half your users will probably have to adjust either way.
Ascending : Arrow pointing up
Descending : Arrow pointing down
Tricks to remember:
Alphabets:
A scending i.e. A B C D
D escending i.e. D C B A
Numbers:
A=1,B=2...Z=26.
Ascending A B C D so 1 2 3 4 i.e. small to large
Descending D C B A so 4 3 2 1 i.e. large to small
Date:
Date is actually converts to a number, it increase on day base, so it works again a number system. today is bigger than yesterday, today is smaller than tomorrow.
I like:
arrow pointing down for ascending
order
arrow pointing up for
descending order
Why? Because it feels like I just sorted the page. I clicked on the heading and it was "Wow! Sorted top-to-bottom". Why "top-to-bottom" is called ascending, is because the numbers/letters get higher in value as the computer writes to the screen. The opposite for descending. However, the list is actually descending down the screen from the top to the bottom - a to z. When you order it the other way, the beginning of the list is at the bottom of the screen.
So to the physical human mental logic - the kind that means clockwise is close and counter-clockwise is open, it makes sense to ignore how the machine sorts and outputs the data, and think rather about how a human might sort data: start at the beginning (smallest values) and at the top of the paper, then advance through to the end (largest value) on down the paper.
The reason the beginning is smallest, is because 1 comes before 2, and the Roman alphabet starts with A and end with Z. So this is sort of default for us humans at this point in time. We write top to bottom and left to right. It has to do with handedness and the way we hold paper - I think. I'm not actually human interface specialist. I just thought about why it seems more natural. The KDE guys are human interface specialists. Take a look how Oxygen is done.
The other way I think is alright is a triangle that is actually showing that the data is smallest to largest. Again, this is rather technical and at first glance, the human might not "get it".
in the classic Finder, Apple didn't use arrows. instead, there were a small icon that looked like three (or four?) horizontal lines of increasing or decreasing length. at first sight, it was like a triangle; but when looking at it, it was clear if it was getting bigger or smaller.
other GUIs (KDE, for example) use triangles, but most people interpret them as arrows, making the message ambiguous.
An arrow pointing up usually means larger or getting larger, so that should be used for Ascending order.
An arrow pointing downwards usually means something is smaller or getting smaller and it should be used for Descending order.
I expect the arrows to show the current state (pointing up when the list is currently ascending). The is what Windows Explorer does in Details View.
The other thing that you need to consider is whether the arrow represents the current sort direction or the sort direction that will be applied if you click on the arrow. (Not always obvious from the contents of the table as there can be arrows on every column)
Sorry to add to the confusion, but you need to consider this.
Clarification on this front can be partially achieved by adding a suitably worded tooltip to the arrow.
"Is there a hard and fast rule for this?" - Apparently not, since you found examples of both.
For general consistency, I'd say that the arrow should point up for ascending, down for descending. This is consistent with Windows (click a column header in Explorer) and Office (filter/sort a column in Excel).
Best place to check, in my opinion.. would be large corporate websites like amazon, dabs etc. as these will be what users are most used to.
I think everybody agrees that the direction of the arrow requires the users to think about its meaning. What does a down arrow mean? A-Z or Z-A? What does it mean when sorting dates? It is clear only when the user looks at the actual sorted data.
For this reason, I find it best not to use any indication of direction. It is enough to indicate the fact that rows are sorted by a certain column. It is important to find out which way the users usually expect the rows to be sorted for the first click. The second click reverses the order, the third click turns sorting off.
I have implemented this several times and users have no problem sorting the rows by different columns the way they like.
This is a highly opinionated question. But here is a logical solution and the reason behind why I chose it :
Solution:
If using an arrow to display sort order in a Table Column, it will be better to use a Down arrow for ascending and vice versa.
Reasons:
If we are referring to a picture or a graph, where visual and value based traversal are both in the same direction, using "Ascending" or "Descending" will serve its purpose as intended. But when it comes to Tables, the main source of confusion is that, the values are traversed to higher values (upward, but only conceptually) but the direction of visual traversal is downward. And since an arrow is a visual clue (direction) it might be easier for someone to understand the directional traversal better with it.
For many people the concept of ascending and descending are understandable in terms of values. But in certain cases, the users of that table might not be aware of these concepts. For example, someone who has never been to school or a primary school kid or someone completely new to digital world. For them, directional concept will be easier to understand. As in a-z, upward or downward. As in 1-9 upward or downward. It is to be noted that educated or experienced users can understand it either way (the 4th reason).
Next reason is that whether we are masters in digital tables or not, we have always written lists and tables. And in almost all the cases, we write it in ascending order in downward directions. So, it is somewhat hardwired to our brain.
Finally, the confusion on this issue always existed and a universal method is always better. To this day, I always analyse how the values are sorted to see if it is in ascending or descending order. The directional arrows never served its purpose since it is not reliable. For educated or experienced users knowing the order immediately will not be a problem. When we create a universal standard though, we must see to it that every probable user would be 'able' to understand it...
How I use it:
I use a tailed arrow for numbers, alphabets or any other values increasing progressively while traversing in that direction.
Since the values are increasing (by default), user can call it Ascending if he wants to, but the arrow is downwards. This also helps me in sorting 'word sets' (for example, the status of a record in the table. It may not be sorted in alphanumeric order but in order of status progression).
Hope this helped.
Remember that descending is for down. So, I would use the down arrow for descending. But, I always get confused by this anyway. I recommend that you use letters instead, like A-Z and Z-A instead of the arrows. Or, use them in conjunction with the arrows.
There is no hard and fast rule, but the best approach is to reduce the apparent complexity for the user, using the best mapping of down and up arrows to the terminology "Ascending" and "Descending".
Note that most non-numeric concepts doesn't have a strong natural mapping to "up" or "down".
Do letters/words go "up" or "down" in the dictionary? How about dates and times? Where it is ambiguous, I believe there is no "right" answer - I recommend allowing "Descending" to represent the more useful sort order for consistency, as the user is likely to think about the table as being "down" as they move their eyes down. Leaving aside digital representations since the users of most applications do not know or care about the internal representation. Therefore alphabet sorting could be "Descending" for A-Z, and time could be Descending with most recent first. The good news is, as long as the first click gives the user the sorting behavior that they expect, and the second reverses it, they mostly won't care which of the two modes is used.
That challenge about the correct sort to do "first" (on showing the content, or sorting on a new column) is the more important implication of the question. The type AND intended usage of the information determines it should sort. Alphabetic should always default A-Z, "descending" by my above logic. Numbers vary much more by use: numbers that represent sequential identifiers, say, an employee ID would be ascending (1-10), while sorting on quantities or price would usually be descending, to bring the largest values to the top. Time also varies - most recent first ("Descending") usually works but in some contexts, the oldest should be listed first.