Finding

NEW

 10 INPUT “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING TO FIND?”, thing_to_find

 20 PRINT “OK, LET’S FIND SOME ”; thing_to_find

 30 FETCH ASSUMPTIONS

 40 GET type_of_thing FROM all_types_of_things FOR

   thing_to_find BASED ON assumptions

 50 GET all_resources_available

 60 FOREACH resource IN all_resources_available

 70 IF resource.type == type_of_thing THEN BREAK

 80 NEXT

 90 knowledge_biscuit = get_info_from_resource(thing_to_find)

 100 IF knowledge_biscuit IS NULL THEN UPDATE assumptions;

   GOTO 40

 110 PRINT “OK, WE HAVE FOUND”; thing_to_find; ” AND IT IS “ knowledge_biscuit

 END

What are your assumptions?

How do you find all_resources_available ?

Do you know all_types_of_things ?

Let’s discuss.

FIND THESE THINGS:

1. Photos of US Airways Flight 1549 one hour after it crash-landed in the Hudson River.
2. A Chinese restaurant near your home address that takes credit cards and is open for lunch.
3. A function in PHP to turn an absolute date (“April 1, 2009”) into a relative date (“one month ago”).
4. Season 1, episode 5 of the TV series Lost.
5. The U.S. representative who received the most money from the financial services industry last year.

Dan Levine

PROBLEM SOLVER

(2009)