# Land use

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/land-use/107594>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 23, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/land-use/107594 "2007-06-23T20:34:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![toadkicker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/5fc32e/32.png) [@toadkicker](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/toadkicker)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2007, 8:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/land-use/107594/1 "2007-06-23T20:34:32Z")

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Okay, I was going to make the subject “Trepidus use of Ruby, again”  
just to make a bunch of people mad (and also catch their attention).  
I think there is a really cool Ruby quiz in here that I just don’t  
know how to word.

I read Joop’s land-use paper (he’s not the author) and realized, what  
an excellent quiz!

In a nutshell:

I have land divided up in a grid. Why I use a grid instead of  
something else is not important right now. That grid has a certain  
size to start with (for extra credit you can change the size and shape  
of it). Each section has characteristics. Characteristics have  
intrinsic value for the use of that section. A land-use of a section  
affects the feasibility of the land use of another land section  
depending on how far away it is (their “relation” to each other).  
Information you are given is this: what characteristics each section  
of land has, that each section can have only one land use, and also  
what each “weight” does every characteristic have for a particular  
land use… The question you are supposed to answer is “what’s the  
best way to section the land?” In other words, this is an efficiency  
question. Don’t worry about _why_ one thing has more weight than the  
other.

Outside of the quiz:

The guys that wrote the paper got around the ambiguity here by  
limiting their result set. There’s more than one answer. So they  
said: should it be that “facilities” are central or dispersed? That  
extra piece of information makes it more interesting becase  
“facilities” have area-influence and houses only do as a group. You  
can take this as deep as you want.

Todd