The zebras are just red herring
General January 24th, 2008
This post is for the Computer Scientist people out there. Those who don’t dig CS231 content should shift their attention pointers elsewheres …
Around the start of the semester, I subscribe to all the course newsgroups to make sure they’re being used, check for obvious threads about IT related issues, etc. It also means I get to lurk questions about the first homework assignments. Sometimes, those questions are “winners”. Like this gem, from the 231 class:
The director of the Binary Zoo has decided that he would like to give
each of the zebras in the main exhibit a new name consisting of a unique
pattern of 0’s and 1’s. There are currently 461 zebras – quite a herd.
How many bits will he need, in order to write out each name?So I don’t get it. Once again. did I miss some lesson on Bits?
It seems like a straight-forward question, but then again I’m a more experienced Computer Scientist than the posting student. Maybe it would help if we told him the zebras are just a red herring. I dunno. Maybe the student did miss the lesson on bits. They should review that stuff — it’s only going to get harder.
About
Maybe he was playing with his bits and pieces.