Looking Out To Sea

I recently enjoyed reading Oleg Kiselyov’s pair of posts on efficiently building subsets of a particular size. Read part one and part two on Oleg’s site.

(By the way, the very act of looking around his site is like wandering through a junk shop where every item you turn over appears to be some lost treasure. A real joy, with mysteries and delights behind every link.)

Whether you’re interested in efficiently finding subsets of size N or not — and let’s face it, you’re probably not — there’s still something incredibly dramatic about the presentation of the problem and solution. I think there is a certain charm to the writing as well:

This article will show the design of the fastest ever interpreted subsets function. Sorry I’m too excited about this.

A warning of course, that if you’re afraid of parentheses, don’t read any further.