William James wrote:
> pat eyler wrote:
>> It looks like there's a cool programming contest scheduled for New Year's Eve:
>> http://opc.kurukshetra.org.in/opc/
>>
>>  a $1,000 first prize, a $500 second prize, and 5 x $100 third prizes.
>>
>> I'm not sure which timezone this is actually happening in, as it's
>> based in India,
>> but it looks pretty cool nonetheless.
> 
>>From the site:
> "You are given N integer numbers. Choose thee of them which give
> maximum product."
> 
> I don't get it.  Isn't this the same as finding the 3 largest numbers?

Integers are not necessarily positive; the complications introduced 
thereby are -- interesting.

Since this is a /programming/ problem, the question arises, too, of what 
to do about overflow. (In Ruby, the answer is, "ignore it, because it 
won't happen except under system-crashing conditions", but I'm not sure 
that's the answer they have in mind.)

-- 
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
   -- Charles Williams.  "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"