Closest Pairs

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  Find distance between 2 points

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  Point class

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  Sort list by x value

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  Closest Pair Algorithm

Inspiration

As a computer science student, I have been learning a lot about data structures, algorithms, math theories, probability, etc. I wanted to put my newly learned skills to use, and started coding various programs related to my course. One topic of my course was graphs, and points. I was inspired to create a program that could be applied to this topic, and so came Closest Pair

What it does

The Closest Pair algorithm will recursively search through an list of points (from a graph) and return the pair of points that are closest to each other.

How I built it

I started off by building the foundation of the program. I planned the code out, wrote pseudocode, and identified what I needed to do. I then built off the foundation, writing functions, methods, and the actual code. After many hours and many days, I came up with the finished program.

Challenges I ran into

During the coding of this program, I ran into many bugs and issues. These bugs would take heavy amounts of time to fix, and every time I fixed one, another would arise. Another challenge I ran into was trying to optimize my code. I realized that some parts of my code would be wasting large amounts of computing time and space. Trying to fix these issues would present big problems, because sometimes making that tiny change would mean I would have to rewrite large portions of the code. Nevertheless, I pushed through and completed my goal.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

One accomplishment I'm proud of was that I persisted and pushed through to complete this program. I ran into so many issues, and I felt like giving up so many times, but I was determined to reach my goal and finish the code. Another accomplishment I'm proud of is that I went further to optimize my code, and not just leave it at the barebones of it's function. I challenged myself and I learned many lessons because of it.

What I learned

During the writing of this code, I learned many lessons, not just in computer science, but in life too. I learned many new programming techniques, aspects, math theories, etc. But while I did learn a lot of programming lessons, I also learned life lessons. I learned that you have to persist through any issues that are presented to you. If you run into a wall, climb it. If you get stuck, pull yourself out. No matter what, you must stay on your path and keep moving forward.

What's next for Closest Pairs

For the future of Closest Pairs, I seek to optimize my code even further. I hope to make my code more applicable to other fields of life, such as medicine, engineering, finance, etc. I also seek to optimize my code's computing space and time.

Built With

• git
• github
• python
• visual-studio-code