Lecture Notes

Introduction

• Discussed an exercise using a sequence of word cards to form a paragraph.
• Punctuation marks are included with specific words. Example: "It was Monday morning."
• Objective: Identify the longest sentence by word count.

Steps to Identify the Longest Sentence

Initial Setup

• Sentences marked by full stops.
• Define 'longest sentence' as the sentence with the most words.
• Start counting words from the beginning, reset at each full stop.

Detailed Process

1. Identify Sentence Endings:
   • Full stop indicates the end of a sentence.
   • Track the word count for each sentence.
2. Counting Words:
   • Start counting words after each full stop.
   • Upon reaching another full stop, store the count.
3. Comparisons:
   • Remember the highest word count encountered.
   • Only keep the count of the longest sentence.

Efficient Method to Keep Track

• Instead of keeping multiple counts, maintain only the maximum count encountered.
• Use one variable (longest_sent_count) to store the highest count.
• Initialize another variable (current_count) to count words in each sentence.
• Upon hitting a full stop:
  • Compare current_count with longest_sent_count.
  • Update longest_sent_count if current_count is higher.
  • Reset current_count to 0 for the next sentence.

Example Walkthrough

• Begin with longest_sent_count = 0 and current_count = 0.
• For the first sentence: "It was Monday morning." (4 words)
  • Update longest_sent_count to 4.
• For the next sentence with 7 words:
  • Update longest_sent_count to 7.
• Continue for subsequent sentences, replacing longest_sent_count if a longer sentence is found.

Discussion on Methods

• Similar to finding the maximum marks in a class.
• Importance of efficient tracking:
  • Reduces memory usage.
  • Simplifies the comparison process.
• Filtering cards for full stops to identify sentence ends.
• Comparison levels: constant vs. constant, card value vs. variable, variable vs. variable.

Conclusion

• Utilized simple iteration to determine the longest sentence.
• Efficiently managed with two variables.
• Demonstrates the combination of counting, comparison, and filtering techniques.