#342: 1337: Part 2

[[Man 1 standing near Man 2, who is on the floor near the armchair.]]

Man 2: So the greatest hacker of our era is a cookie-baking mom?

Man 1: Second-greatest.

Man 2: Oh?

Man 1 (Narrating) : Mrs. Roberts had two children. Her son, Bobby, was never much for computers, but her daughter Elaine took to them like a ring in the bell.

Man 1 (Narrating) : When Elaine turned 11, her mother sent her to train under Donald Knuth in his mountain hideaway.

Man 1 (Narrating) : For four years she studied algorithms.

Knuth: Child -

Knuth: Why is A* search wrong in this situation?

«swish»

Elaine: Memory usage!

Knuth: What would you use?

Elaine: Dijkstra’s algorithm!

Man 1 (Narrating) : Until one day she bested her master

Knuth: So our lower bound here is 0(n log n)

Elaine: Nope. Got it in 0(n log (log n))

Man 1 (Narrating) : And left.