题目描述
Farmer John has lost his prize cow Bessie, and he needs to find her!
Fortunately, there is only one long path running across the farm, and Farmer John knows that Bessie has to be at some location on this path. If we think of the path as a number line, then Farmer John is currently at position xand Bessie is currently at position y (unknown to Farmer John). If Farmer John only knew where Bessie was located, he could walk directly to her, traveling a distance of |x−y|. Unfortunately, it is dark outside and Farmer John can't see anything. The only way he can find Bessie is to walk back and forth until he eventually reaches her position.
Trying to figure out the best strategy for walking back and forth in his search, Farmer John consults the computer science research literature and is somewhat amused to find that this exact problem has not only been studied by computer scientists in the past, but that it is actually called the "Lost Cow Problem