Whenever I am learning a new programming language I often find it helpful, after learning the basic syntax, to try to learn the libraries and such by solving problems from Project Euler http://projecteuler.net/ or many other websites which give various toy problems in computer science. There are many such websites. I am interested in finding (or making) a list of problems of this sort from which one could slowly familiarize oneself with the core biological, statistical and technical concepts in bioinformatics (I am a n00b at biology, but have a background in computational science). I want to emphasize the comparison with Project Euler. No problem should be excessively technical, and the early problems should assume only basic familiarity with biology and statistics. I have already collected a few questions. Can any one point me to an existing list? Should we start a community wiki page for the topic?
Eric, you mean Mendel :-)
Agreed, maybe also something where solutions could be posted in different languages like rosettacode.org
I would find this site interesting if no external library was used. For "How do you read a Fasta file using PERL?" : i don't want to see "just use BioPerl", show me the CODE !
Great idea Gabriel! I like the idea of calling it project Mendel.
I'm sure there only needs to be a leader for this project to gain interest. I do think that a wiki page for would be a very good starting point to collect both ideas and problems, which the project leader could use to build the site. I would definitely love to try myself against the problems of Project Mendel lol. It would give us the occasion to try that new language we are learning on something else than algorithms for finding prime numbers :)
A more worth name would be 'project Dayhoff', in the name of one of the first bioinformaticians. Mendel was not a bioinformatician :-)
Very interesting concept! Want to name it Project Mandel, after the 'father of modern genetics'? :)
I would definitely favour such a project as well. Am learning a new language at the moment and did some of the Euler problems, but they bear little to no use for my day-to-day work.
Mmm... of course :)
Ahah! Of course :)
Is the Project Euler site using an easy to reuse template? Otherwise, what could be a good (maybe open) template for such a site?
Pierre: of course, my mistake... Is the Project Euler site using an easy to reuse template? Otherwise, what could be a good (maybe open) template for such a site?
What are you asking here exactly? Do you want us to point you to projects similar to Euler for bioinformaticians, or you want to create one yourself?
I feel the bioinformatics students' community will be elated to have such a thing :-)
I'm with JRS - I think if we come up with a list of bioinformatics problems of increasing difficulty, showing analogous solutions in as many languages as viable would be a great resource