Question

What's your opinion on this solution to number 2 from problem set 4 (Spring 2011)?

http://dpaste.com/788291/

Answer 1

Hi David, unlikely though, what if you get 2 shifts that returns exactly the same count? The list.max() will only return the first max number.

Answer 2

Yes, but if there are two shifts that return the same count, it's indifferent which one it returns right?

Answer 3

maybe for a long text they decrypt different words but happen to be the same number? We may need a way to iterate the list and return all indices with the max number and also check the decoded texts?

Answer 4

This is Problem Set 4 - Question 2. Your answer is probably related to question 4. This function is used to decode a message that was encoded using just one shift. Multiple shifts are considered in question 4. In this case the shift that decodes more words will decode all the words in the message because it was encoded with one shift only.