Challenge #485: Hot Dog Eating Contest Simulation

[rmassambane]

485

[abe_ibanez]

Spoiler

[Steve_Vincent]

Spoiler

Spoiler

Bent my head in all sorts of directions, never really done things with iterative macros before and this has been an interesting learning experience. Wouldn't have got there without ideas from others

[ed_hayter]

Many Glizzy's consumed in the completion of this iterative macro.

Spoiler

[Qiu]

Give a try.

Spoiler

[wbasuki]

My Solution

Spoiler

[jtmoll]

My stab at the solution

Spoiler

[Kilbyflow_Designer]

Complete!!

Spoiler

 

[tammybrown_tds]

I'm done with hot dogs for awhile....thanks.

[TH]

This one seems straightforward, yet it turns out to have one major requirement that is not given or explained.

What to do with the initial data is simple, and how to determine the overall winner is also simple.

What is *NOT* simple was choosing how to group the people for Round 2.

The challenge statement made no claim as to how this would be done, so you had to figure it out on your own if you wanted to match the given output.

I spent a long time figuring out how they wanted me to pick the groups for Round 2. Eventually I had to sort of semi-hard code the groupings in Round 2. I do not like doing things like that. I prefer being dynamic as much as concievably possible.

Learning -

1. I have pointed out elsewhere that the join tool sorts the data behind the scenes. What I learned with this challenge is that the output rows can be in a different order depending on what you used for your join condition. This is true even if the extra join field would make no difference (because it is 1-1 mapped with another field that you are already using).

2. This challenge further emphasised to me that when doing these kinds of problems in a business setting it is very important to establish as many parameters, methods, and guidelines as you can before starting to code, and during the process it is the case that having an open line of communication with the requestor is quite helpful.

Spoiler