Programming Statistics

I need to find data on the distribution of cut blades of grass across the virtual lawn. Consider a 10 x 10 grid of un-cut blades of grass. The lawn mower traverses the grid and displaces the blades of grass. Now, I need to find some way to determine a good lawn mower route from a poor lawn mower route. I'm thinking some sort of ratio output. I have, so far, divided the grid into overlapping circular zones and can now account for the quantity in each of these regions. I assume the idea now is to compare the "cut lawn" region counts with the control, "un-cut lawn", region counts.

so I have frequency data for an "un-cut lawn" falling in a mostly normal distrbution.

So, how can I compare the frequency data of an un-cut lawn with a cut lawn programmatically?

assume data such as:

Un-Cut Lawn Zone Count Frequency

[0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 5, 39, 20, 22, 10, 3, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]

Cut Lawn Zone Count Frequency

[5, 5, 2, 10, 1, 2, 1, 3, 5, 3, 10, 2, 9, 3, 3, 1, 1, 10,10,4, 4]

Thanks!

If I need to explain differently please let me know.

[1104 byte] By [yahwehagapea] at [2007-11-27 9:42:59]
# 1
uh, there are better ways to do that...Shortest path determination for example.Of course you should also account for some overlap between the tracks as a real mower wouldn't run perfectly perpendicular tracks with exactly 0 space between them.
jwentinga at 2007-7-12 23:47:30 > top of Java-index,Other Topics,Algorithms...
# 2
I'm not trying to find the best path. I'm trying to find out how I can differentiate between a good path and a bad path (as far as cut-grass distribution is concerned). You see, the user pushes the lawn mower around with his arrow keys, I need to compare the resulting distribution.
yahwehagapea at 2007-7-12 23:47:30 > top of Java-index,Other Topics,Algorithms...
# 3
same thing. You need a way to determine the "quality" of the path taken. By knowing the overlap between tracks and the amount of lawn missed at the end you can determine that quality.No need to count any blades of grass cut, just ground covered.
jwentinga at 2007-7-12 23:47:30 > top of Java-index,Other Topics,Algorithms...