topic Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style) in General Discussions

Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

jdunkerley79 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:17:12 GMT

Discussion thread for day 6 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/6

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

cgoodman — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 05:51:22 GMT

Shortest gap between * and ** today, and fastest overall solve (started at 5:15am) (excluding day 1 where I can't remember when I started, but was probably the fastest day overall).

Workflow:

Macro:

It was much simpler than I thought, I was imagining that we were going to head back into monitoring germinating flowers in space (I think 2018?), and that the part two logic wouldn't just be a case of iterating over more days (added interface tool after the solve), but instead that there would be some need to keep track of generations as older fish might end up with longer gestation periods or something like that. So far AoC is being kind...

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

bflick — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 05:59:50 GMT

Tried to do it without an iterative macro, but couldn't figure it out. Looking forward to seeing if anyone does.

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

cgoodman — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 06:18:10 GMT

@bflick good to see another PwC’er at the top of the leaderboard 👏

Looks like we both applied the same logic, which made the part two solve really easy. Reading on Reddit after the solve it looks like a lot of people went down the route of exponentially increasing arrays/strings and wondered why after 256 days it was slowing down!

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

bflick — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 06:20:15 GMT

My iterative macro first attempt was creating a giant list, but it would slow like crazy in the 30 day range. Turns out optimizing made it way easier!

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

NicoleJohnson — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 06:28:53 GMT

I'm sure there is a math way to solve this, and given enough time I am sure I could have googled it... but today is not that day. Iterative macro it is!

Full disclosure, this was my second iterative macro... the first one was REALLY slow. But while I was waiting for it to run for Day 2, I figured out a way faster way to solve for both, using one macro with a configurable limit (same as @cgoodman & @bflick , looks like!) The trick for me was realizing I didn't have to parse an exponentially growing number of records. I could just count the number of instances of each number, use my iterative macro to adjust them down one (and add an 8 for any 0's) and then re-count my numbers and iterate again.

And the macro...

Super stoked about how this one ended up. Only 14 tools used, and the 256 day iteration runs in less than 1 second!! I love it when an iterative macro plan comes together...

Cheers!

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

clmc9601 — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 06:30:25 GMT

Wow, the lanternfish really did take over...

I started with the approach of exponentially increasing the number of rows, but that would have taken all night to finish! Here's my updated version. Looks like it's pretty similar to the first several.

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

afv2688 — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 10:56:39 GMT

Built them together on a batch macro to get both results

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

patrick_digan — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 13:07:01 GMT

Workflow:

Iterative Macro:

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

AkimasaKajitani — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 13:32:22 GMT

Today is reflection.

For star1, I made a simple iterative macro. It works well for star1.

But at star2, it takes too long time and finally this macro could not output the result. Because too many data kept me away.

I didn't become aware of a simple thing!

My latest macro is as follows.

After finishing the result, I made the macro bellow to be able to change the iterative count.

Final Workflow :

GitHub

https://github.com/AkimasaKajitani/AdventOfCode/tree/main/2021

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

danilang — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 13:47:15 GMT

That's a lot of lantern fish, making for a very bright ocean.

Non-macro (here you go, @bflick) solution running in 0.3 sec for the 256 days. I have many happy!!

Didn't win Tool Golf, @NicoleJohnson, but I might just have the fastest solution

Uses a multi-row tool that looks back up to 17 rows with special conditions to calculate the current count of 8 and 6 fish.

Dan

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

patrick_digan — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 14:10:03 GMT

@danilang Very cool! @bflick It's not baseA (and it wouldn't beat the speed of danilang), but I used the alteryx abacus to solve it without macros

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

estherb47 — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 15:17:12 GMT

Went the iterative route, and like many others, realized that generating numbers was way too slow.

Generating the count of each number was the way to go. When you reach zero, replace those zeros with an 8 and a 6, copying the count of the number for zero for each.

I'm sure there's a non-macro way to do this, just haven't figured it out yet.

Anyone else frustrated in removing the commas when you generate a number with Alteryx?

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

DataG8 — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 15:54:50 GMT

I finally had to bite on the macro bait. I think @NicoleJohnson is right that there is a mathematical solve with factorials and modulus functions but I didn't get there. Then I tried generating rows, that didn't work past 30 days. My first macro left it in rows and does the 80 days fine but slowed way down about 135 iterations in. After all that, I figured it out the same way most of the others did.

Cheers, Michael

SolutionMacro

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

dsmdavid — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 20:40:03 GMT

Different version of macro-less

with a `fun` generate rows...

https://github.com/dsmdavid/AdventCode2021

Edited for Golf points:

@danilang well, this one doesn't perform that well, but it counts towards golf points 😅

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

leozhang2work — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 23:23:47 GMT

Really went nowhere with this one, have to look what others did. @NicoleJohnson's '6,8' split give me the idea to do part 1, then part 2 went nowhere again with the speed, another idea on the summarize helped on the part 2. Learnt a lot about AMP engine for the wrong reason 😂

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

joshbennett — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 05:56:54 GMT

Like most others, iterative macro FTW.

While it runs in less than 1 minute at ~44s, I am curious if anyone comes up with a faster solution without an iterative macro - definitely seemed the path of least resistance to me.

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

afv2688 — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 15:30:42 GMT

Non iterative 0.2 seconds

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

SeanAdams — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 19:47:54 GMT

Like many of you - I iterated using a macro - but used a Batch Macro instead just to buck the trend. I find that batch macros pretending to be iterative macros are MUCH easier to debug. I want to go back and look at some of the formulaic solutions now 🙂

first summarized so that you only had 9 buckets, and filled in gaps to make this easier.

You'll see that I pump the fish data out to a file

Then, using a Fake Macro Input (FMI) - simulated an iterative macro. Again, the great thing about this is it's super simple to debug (unlike an Iterative Macro) because each time you run it, it's one iteration

Re: Advent of Code 2021 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

danilang — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 19:42:48 GMT

Challenge accepted @joshbennett

.3 seconds non-macro. See my post above. @afv2688 is measuring in European time. That's why his solution is .1 second faster than mine.

Dan