The Wolf, goat, and cabbage problem can be stated as [1]:
A farmer with a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the wolf would eat the goat, or the goat would eat the cabbage. How can they cross the river without anything being eaten?
A long transcontinental flight was a good opportunity to try to attack this problem. Here are some approaches to model this. Not at all a very useful or practical model, but still interesting, I think (although I may be in a small minority here).
Inventory model
In this model, we keep track of the inventory of items (wolf, goat, cabbage). We assume the starting inventory is: all items are on the left bank of the river. The final inventory should be: all items are on the right bank. In this model, I assume the following numbering scheme:
---- 31 SET trip trips trip1 , trip2 , trip3 , trip4 , trip5 , trip6 , trip7 , trip8 , trip9 , trip10 ---- 31 SET dir direction of trip L->R, R->L ---- 31 SET tripDir trip direction combos L->R R->L trip1 YES trip2 YES trip3 YES trip4 YES trip5 YES trip6 YES trip7 YES trip8 YES trip9 YES trip10 YES
