For economists who use numerical methods to compute solutions to complex problems, this one is a treat. This is a link to a post by Peter Norvig, currently the Director of Research at Google, Inc. and formerly chief computational guy at NASA Ames Research Center, Sun Microsystems Labs, UC Berkeley, and USC. In this short article, he proposes different algorithms for quickly getting to your song of choice on the iPod Shuffle, which does not have a display. His methods include a value function iteration, policy function iteration, and a randomization algorithm--each complete with programming code and simulations to test their effectiveness.
(Thanks to Jason for pointing me to this.)
(Thanks to Jason for pointing me to this.)
