As you may, or may not, know I am currently working on my masters in Computer Science. This means I’m probably a masochist, but it also means that I get to spend time playing with some toy problems that can be kind of fun. Thus, the point of my log entry today.

I’m getting ready to work on solving the Metric k-center problem for my final project in my AI course. I imagine the solution will contain lots of magical and nifty techniques like genetic algorithms, wisdom of crowds, distributed computing (for large problem sizes), etc. It should be a lot of fun. If this sounds interesting, then check back in a couple weeks or so and I should have a good writeup of the solution that I have come to. Wait a little longer and (hopefully) you’ll see a mysteriously similar research paper show up in some random publication on the inter-webs.

So, consider this the questions for which I will follow up with:

• What will the solution look like?
• What approaches will be best utilized for solving/estimating the problem?
• How fast is it? (because all we care about is speed)

• What makes my solution better than other existing solutions?