On the eighth day after the competition, at 9:50 in the morning, there were still ten minutes left before the organizer announced the winners.
If there are no special unforeseen delays, the organizer will announce the rankings of the competition on the official website, as well as the main examination committee’s guidance on the contestants’ works.
At this moment, in the computer room of the library of Xiazhong University of Science and Technology.
Several students were nervously gathered in front of a computer, repeatedly refreshing the official website of the Hope Cup competition. Li Rongyun was as anxious as a restless wild boar, walking back and forth behind several classmates.
As the ace of Xiazhong University of Science and Technology and the president of the Computer Association of Xiazhong University of Science and Technology, he is determined to win the Hope Cup competition. Keeping the trophy in the dean's office is also the dean's expectation for him.
In fact, he was quite satisfied with his work until he submitted it, and he had no doubt that it would help him win this competition.
However…
Just a few days ago, some rumors he heard made him feel uneasy.
Noticing the restless expression on Li Rongyun's face, several members of the Computer Association cheered him up.
"It's okay, President. With your strength, there will definitely be no problem."
"Yes! No matter what, we are definitely better than next door!"
"What are you talking about? Our president must be the champion!"
"I hope so," Li Rongyun forced a smile, looked at his watch for the nth time, and muttered in a low voice, "Is there still one minute left..."
A minute passes quickly.
It can even be said to be fleeting.
When the time in the lower right corner of the computer reached ten o'clock, the refresh of the website stalled for a moment due to the surge in traffic, but it soon returned to normal.
Li Rongyun rushed to the computer, pushed away the two students who were blocking him, and looked at the list of winners on the computer screen. However, at this moment, his expression froze.
champion-
Department of Software Engineering, Jiangcheng University—Hao Yun!
Topic selection—4!
"This is impossible!"
An unbelievable roar came out of his mouth. It wasn't until everyone in the computer room looked in this direction that he calmed down his voice with a frozen expression and lowered his unbelievable voice.
"Question 4... How is it possible?!"
This happened in previous years as well.
A small group of contestants surprisingly solved the specially set trap questions.
However, due to the difficulty of the questions themselves, most of the submitted answers have flaws, so they basically have no chance of winning, and it is difficult to even see the top ten.
Especially the fourth question this year is simply impossible to complete...
The members of the Xia Dong University Computer Association stared blankly at their president, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how to speak. He seemed to be in a daze, muttering to himself while downloading the file in the attachment for free browsing.
However, something even more unbelievable happened.
The answer that appears in the attachment is only a hexadecimal number.
Although there is a large paragraph of explanation added by the competition organizer below this number to explain the usage of this number, as well as even longer and more professional evaluation opinions of the main examination committee than this line of explanation, this still cannot change his being dismissed. A number beats the truth.
"A number..."
With bloodshot eyes, Li Rongyun looked at the list of winners, followed the first place, and sure enough found his name in the second place.
And this also made the frustration in his heart even stronger.
He could accept that the one who defeated him was a piece of code that was so good that no one could fault it, but it was difficult to accept that the one who defeated him was such a seemingly insignificant thing.
Li Rongyun's face was full of frustration.
Standing next to him, Yang Yunhui, who is also a member of the Computer Association of Xiazhong University of Science and Technology, had a thoughtful expression in his eyes. After holding her chin and recalling it carefully for a long time, she suddenly spoke.
"This person... seems familiar to me."
"Looks familiar?" Li Rongyun looked back at her in despair.
"Well, to be precise, we just met him a few days ago," Yang Yunhui said awkwardly with an intriguing expression, "We were having afternoon tea at the W Hotel, and he seemed to be sitting at the table not far from us... It looked like he had been sitting there for a while when we came in."
Li Rongyun was stunned.
"The table not far from us... that is to say, he submitted the answer earlier than us?"
But he soon realized that what he said was nonsense.
After all, the answer is just a line of numbers. How much time can a line of numbers take
With a hint of unwillingness in his heart, he sat in front of the computer, downloaded the code to the computer, and quickly wrote a code for finding the reciprocal square root that could record the number of calculation steps according to the code provided by the official website of the competition.
Optimized the underlying function
How the hell is this? Is it really possible? !
The result of the calculation came out instantly, and Li Rongyun and several classmates behind him were stunned on the spot.
After randomly inputting a number, the calculation of the original function took five steps to get the result. After modifying the hexadecimal number used to calculate the guess value, the number of steps was instantly reduced to two steps.
Li Rongyun didn't believe in evil and tried several numbers again, but the results were the same without exception. The number of operation steps of the original function basically fluctuates between 4 and 7 steps. Only in rare cases can it reach 2 steps. However, the optimized function always gets the result in two steps no matter how it tries.
"This is mathematics..." A classmate standing behind couldn't help but said, "But how did he do it?"
yes…
How is this done
Everyone, including Li Rongyun, wanted to know this question, but no matter how they thought about it, they were all at a loss.
Just by adding and subtracting hexadecimal numbers under the shift algorithm, the precise value can be reached in one step and directly approach the edge of the final result. No matter which known mathematical formula is applied, it cannot explain the strange mathematical principles involved.
At this moment, the confused Li Rongyun suddenly began to understand why the main examination committee used the word "unbelievable" in the evaluation.
really…
This truly deserves an incredible rating.
If the rewritten underlying function can really be so much more streamlined than the original function, even if it is only reflected in the reduction of 0.0001 seconds of calculation time on the hardware, and accumulated in the program that calls the function thousands of times, that is still a Quite amazing optimization results.
Not even just Glacier Engine…
The entire field of computer graphics will benefit from this.
Li Rongyun's shoulders relaxed slightly, and the expression on his face finally relaxed and felt a little relieved.
At least…
It’s not unfair to lose to such an opponent!
…
At the same time, Academician Zhan Yongshu, who was far away at Shuimu University, was sitting in his office and had just completed the paper he had been conceiving for the past two days.
Unlike many of the impressive research results he has published, this rare paper does not propose any innovative ideas, but is just a summary and evaluation of existing knowledge.
Speaking of which, the content of the paper is actually closely related to the hexadecimal number known as the "magic number", and more than fifty percent of the paper is even concentrated on this.
However, unlike Professor Jia Yuxin, as a scholar in the field of information, he did not explore the hidden secrets from a mathematical perspective, but only evaluated the contribution of this number to the field of information engineering from an information perspective.
And, some enlightening clues.
At the end of the paper, after thinking for a long time, Academician Zhan Yongshu wrote down his own opinions.
[Although I have studied and researched in the field of information engineering for many years, I had never thought before that the underlying functions that have been streamlined to an impeccable level by countless generations of scholars still have such amazing room for improvement.]
[As for the mathematical logic contained in this, I have no way of understanding it yet. Even if a friend of mine who works at the Xia Guo Institute of Mathematics has contacted the student, the answer he got was just a flash of intuition.]
[I believe in this explanation, just like our initial solution to the Basel problem was due to various intuitions and coincidences. At the same time, I also believe that the mathematical principles contained in this may provide a key and extremely precious clue for the advancement of informatics!]
After reading the paper he had just finished from cover to cover, Academician Zhan Yongshu nodded with satisfaction, and then picked up a written letter placed on the table.
This letter was sent by Zhang Wei, the editor-in-chief of "Times Youth Daily", hoping to interview him, as the main audition committee, about the winning work of this Hope Cup competition.
He did know this enthusiastic and polite young man, he was quite nice. In the past two years, "Times Youth Daily" has been operating its social media accounts well, and its influence among the student community has been growing year by year.
Looking at the interview invitation in his hand, Academician Zhan Yongshu suddenly raised a smile.
The troubles of fame…
That student will probably realize it soon.