Thread: Needing a little bit of help with finding the minimum value

Originally Posted by nobletype

I give up. I tried looking at alternate ways but I really can't figure it out. Can you please post what you had in mind?

No.

There was a very specific reason you started your comparisons with 6, what was it.

Too bad.

If you only chose 6 because it was the first in the deck, why are you trying to use the minimum of the first deck while sorting the 2nd deck?

Originally Posted by nobletype

Because I have no idea how to go through the loop again without looking at the minimum of the integer from the loop prior. Sheesh, forget it. Obviously I'm not going to get any help here no matter how many times I say I can't figure out. What's the point of reaching out for help if all I get is "think logically" no matter how many times I say it's out of my reach?

The thing is, I don't understand your problem here. Allow me to quote what you wrote earlier:

Originally Posted by nobletype

6 is less than 8. 6 is not less than 2, thus 2 is the newest low number. 2 is less than 9. 2 is not lower than 1, thus 1 is the newest low number. 1 is less than 9. 1 is less than 6.

That is great. You described the process, and arrived at the answer in a way that can be translated into a C++ program. But then you also wrote:

Originally Posted by nobletype

Now lets say I have a new deck of cards, where my mind is supposed to keep a clean slate in terms of the lowest number. But I can't shake it off. Now, the deck of cards is 4, 2, 6, 7, 10, 3. I won't be able to pick a low number from these because I can't shake off the 1 as the lowest number from my last batch of cards. Thus, I accidentally pick 1 as the lowest number, even if it wasn't part of this new batch of cards.

Now this does not make sense. That you "accidentally pick 1" is irrational. Obviously, following the process you described earlier, you should now say:

4 is not less than 2, thus 2 is the newest low number. 2 is less than 6. 2 is less than 7. 2 is less than 10. 2 is less than 3.

If you get over this irrational thinking, you will have what MWAAAHAAA and I were getting at earlier: you pick the first number of the list as the lowest number, and then go through the rest of the numbers, comparing the current number with the current lowest number. When you have gone through the entire list, the current lowest number must be the lowest in the entire list. It is as simple as that.

Now, a variant of this is what you ended up doing: you start by assigning a number higher than any in the list as the lowest number, and then begin looping over the list. This works, but it also means that you need to already know the highest number of the list... or you just assign the highest possible number (which works for the built-in integer types). Yet, ultimately this boils down to the same kind of comparison, after the first iteration of the loop.

Unfortunately, if you insist that you "have no idea how to go through the loop again without looking at the minimum of the integer from the loop prior", then nothing we can say can possibly help you, since you are just being irrational. It is like saying that you will always pay $5 for an ice cream, because that is how much an ice cream costs, even though it is on offer for $2.