Talk:Euler problems/Answers

What are you up to? This has nothing to do with programming in Haskell. Please stop mistreating Project Euler and use the username you use on Project Euler so that we are able to locate the user that does this kind of things.

Anybody restoring the disgusting contents of this page is willingly infringing again. That cannot be considered as ignorant behaviour. hk

This page has totally nothing to do with Haskell, and therefore doesn't belong in an Haskell wiki.

Cale, call me a Vandal if you wish, but this is utterly disgusting. Daniel.is.fischer

I already tried this before, but he just reverted the page..

The Project Euler problems are copyrighted under the creative commons license. http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=copyright http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Legal version http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/legalcode If you read this you will see that the simple permissive license is not identical to the creative commons licence. The share alike condition reads: "Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one."

henk263

I disagree that a list of numbers could even potentially infringe on the copyright. First of all, where does this list of numbers appear in the copyrighted material? Secondly, it is clearly a tiny fraction of Project Euler's work and would reasonably fall under fair use.

CaleGibbard 10:21, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I also believe that copyright doesn't apply here.

However, I don't see how this page helps to promote Haskell or serves any purpose besides upsetting the Project Euler folks.

This page is a lot different in that regard from the other disputed pages that contain actual solutions, mostly written in Haskell, which serve an educational purpose. (n.b. I have not actually read them, I'm going by the discussion.)

Int-e 01:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I protected this page due to the edit war, but I'm not necessarily against deleting it. What do other people think? —Ashley Y 01:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I also have no problem with deleting this. It doesn't help Haskell any, and just upsets people needlessly. I want to see code and ideasdons 04:06, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The page doesn't take up much space, and would be useful for people testing regressions while working on solutions. I'd rather it stay. CaleGibbard 04:40, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with those who would like this page removed. It serves no useful purpose (it's easy to test possible solutions directly on the Project Euler site) and has nothing to do with Haskell. Robinrobin 12:15, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

To help you in your discussion about the usefulness of this page: I altered the limit for problem 10, so the answer here is not valid any more. Moreover: if the new answer appears here, I will change the limit for this problem again. I'm planning to do so for some other problems but will not give any notification about which problem and when. I thought it fair play to notify you. hk

Hk, what's your issue with this page? Surely the solutions to the problems are programs rather than the numbers they output, so are the numbers even spoilers? —Ashley Y 11:17, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

To me the numbers are more spoilers than the programs. There has been ample evidence of childish people that have been "solving" problems using OEIS. (Yes the answers to some of the earlier problems can be easily found on OEIS, currently we try to exclude that possibilty, although we make a slip sometimes). In due time this list here will be googlable. Even the knowledge that such a list exits will be spoiling the pleasure for some people.I have in fact no objections to some (not too many) programs that show how to solve a problem e.g in Haskell. E.g. I would love to see how problem 10 could be solved using a primesieve in Haskell. The current "solution" tells me nothing about that. In fact the list of answers to our problems are the keywords to our site. Why do you think we only allow people access to the forum of a problem after providing the correct answer? What this list here does is overthrowing the entire concept of Project Euler.hk

Forgive me if I'm wrong, as I haven't really participated much in Project Euler, but given the FAQ, isn't the entire concept basically to provide a bunch of problems for people to work on? I don't see how publishing the solutions, even in an otherwise unilluminating way, could possibly compromise that goal. People who want to solve the problems on their own can still do so, no? Oh, and if you'd like to see a proper prime sieve in Haskell, this paper would be of interest. CaleGibbard 15:54, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd also like to add that in my experience, knowing *a* solution to some problem does not tend to spoil the problem. One can always look for others, and still have fun doing it. CaleGibbard 16:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

If we thought it a good idea to publish the answer in advance we would have done that already, instead of letting people find out that some wiki has them. Moreover sometimes problems change, or their answer changes. So it would be better, provided that we thought it a good idea to prepublish those numbers, that we did that ourselves.hk

That sounds like a good idea to me. Then you can keep them up to date, and other people don't have to worry so much about doing that. Why don't you? I'm sure that others would feel less inclined to bother if the Project Euler site already contained a well-maintained public list of the solutions. CaleGibbard 16:26, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

mathschallenge.net is another site from the makers of project euler that does keep a list of solutions to every problem. However maths challenges isn't nearly as popular as Project Euler, even though the question are of the same difficulty. Pokerke

Hey, thanks for pointing me at mathschallenge.net. Looking at it, many of the problems are still sort of lame, but there are a few at least which actually appear to have motivating consequences. CaleGibbard 18:21, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Just noticed the discussion over here. I think these answers add very little to the Haskell wiki. When someone is using Google to find the answer to a certain PE problem, and comes across the Haskell solution, he has to learn Haskell a little, download an Haskell compiler and experiment with it a bit. That would benefit the Haskell community imho. This answer page on the other hand doesn't require people to learn any Haskell at all and makes it easier to "cheat". (the user is only cheating on himself in my opinion, but still). Also, this list of numbers seems to annoy PE users quite a lot and has very little to do with Haskell, so I say remove it.

The Haskell (and not the C++) solutions to PE problems are very usefull I think, and assist in learning Haskell.Pokerke

If I understand correctly, the complaint is that each numerical answer is considered proof of a solution and thus allows access to the appropriate problem forum, and by publishing them here we subvert that proof. Is that right? —Ashley Y 02:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That is correct :-) Pokerke

Except that said number cannot really be considered proof anyway, since other people could always publish lists of solutions like this, even if it's not us. It's really more a problem with the design of PE, not with anyone else's willingness to publish the list of solutions. In fact, simply because we've had all of this annoyance, I'm seriously considering maintaining such a list on my own site. It's not so much that I think that it's terribly useful (though it is certainly of some use to those working on solutions, allowing them to quickly check solutions offline, or indeed, to access the PE forums when they'd otherwise given up on trying to solve the problem), or that I think the Haskell Wiki is the ideal place for such a list (indeed PE's own site would be the best place). It's really more a matter of principle. Censorship over a matter like this, when we would be entirely within our rights to keep the page, and it is indeed beneficial to some Haskell users, seems really excessive. CaleGibbard 14:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it hurts us because it annoys the PE people so much, and doesn't really promote Haskell very much. —Ashley Y 10:43, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

OK. I'm leaning towards deleting this particular page on the grounds that it is very little contribution to Haskell, and annoys some people sufficiently to cause trouble.

Sorry for the long process, this is our first content dispute and I don't want to annoy anyone. —Ashley Y 08:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Haskell wants to be known as the nice-guy community. I'm all for Cale hosting this on his own page if he wants, and it makes plenty of sense to do so. I also see how he's reactive to what were acts of vandalism in the haphazard deletion of valid haskell PE solutions. But in this case, keeping this list on the Haskell wiki seems more trouble than its worth. — sclv 12:51, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I deleted it. —Ashley Y 00:53, 3 March 2008 (UTC)