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 DATAPLAY |
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| What's
your star strategy? |
Solve the
puzzle
within a
pre-determined
number of
moves for
a chance to
win a Teradata
varsity-style
jacket.
This
issue's contest ends
December 15, 2004.
Congratulations to
Margaret Redelinghuys
of Manukau City Council,
Manukau City, New
Zealand. She was selected
as the winner of last
issue's "Navigating
the IT sea" puzzle.
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Star-scrambled puzzle
Created by Scott Kim
Data warehousing gives you an integrated, single view of your business. But that view only makes sense if the data is accurate; bad data scrambles the picture.
As David English explains in Quest
for quality, poor-quality
data is a common and costly problem.
To get the clearest, most accurate
view of your data,you need to
think strategically.What are your
business goals? What level of
data quality is adequate for meeting
the goals? And how can you achieve
that level of quality as efficiently
as possible?
Consider the puzzle below. Your challenge is to unscramble the star by sliding tiles. If you move the tiles around long enough, you will probably find a solution. But suppose you have to solve this puzzle efficiently. How can you find the solution with the fewest possible moves? You have to plan ahead and think smart.
For this particular puzzle, we can take shortcuts. Notice that only the piece in the lower left corner of the scrambled star is in its correct final position. All other pieces are out of position. On any one move you can reposition at most three pieces. Therefore, it will take at least five moves to solve this puzzle. Also notice that the piece in the lower right corner is one space to the right of its final position. The most efficient solution probably moves this tile just once.
Plan your strategy and unscramble the star in as few moves as possible. T
© Teradata Magazine—September
2004
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