holmies feedback (Camilla Cheng & Lisa Ye)

[camillac]

We apologize for the late feedback. :(

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• statement of a problem
  • Are you expecting a "yes" or "no"? As a string? Or are you expecting something else? Please specify!

  • Please proofread.

• recursive abstraction

  • Solve a maze of size what?
  • Try to follow the format that the recursive abstraction normally is in!

  • What do you mean by "solve the maze"? Use the language that you used in "statement of a problem"!

• base cases

  • What if the explorer begins on a wall and there is no hallway?

• English or pseudocode description of algorithm
  • Your algorithm repeats a lot of things that could be solved by the recursive abstraction~. It does the same problem with a different direction each time.
  • What constitutes as a junction? When all 4 sides have hallways, or when there is more than one hallway to go toward.
  • Also, how do you handle a straight pathway maze that has a size greater than 1. Your algorithm never deals with mazes that are bigger than 1 but have no junctions.
  • Your algorithm never returns anything that solves the problem. How will going through the maze eventually answer the question?
  • Related to the previous feedback, include the treasure somewhere in the algorithm! Your algorithm goes through the maze, but never checks whether or not there is a path to the treasure!

[lisaye1221]

Adding on to the recursive abstraction:

I think you're on the right track in terms of dividing the problem into a smaller problem. But in this case, asking the recursive abstraction to find a path to the treasure of a smaller maze doesn't really make sense to me. I think we shouldn't modify the maze. Also it isn't really clear to me what a maze of size "n-1 hallway" looks like. What does hallway mean? A stepping stone or a whole rank/file?

[lisaye1221]

About the pseudocode:

I suggest converting this English into code format so it will be very easy to code when it is time. Checking if the player is at a "junction" requires a whole lot of code. I assume by junction you mean when all 4 direction of the current spot is a stepping stone. I don't think that is necessary to check though, it is too complicated. I suggest to treat every spot as a "junction" and check all 4 spots in each direction as you have described and let the recursive backtracking do the trick. Hope that makes sense.