Programmers dream of
Abstraction, recursion, and
Typing really fast.

Introduction

Important submission note: For full credit:

• Submit with Phases 1 and 2 complete by Thursday 10/03, worth 1 pt.
• Submit with all phases complete by Tuesday 10/08.

Try to attempt the problems in order, as some later problems will depend on earlier problems in their implementation and therefore also when running ok tests.

The entire project can be completed with a partner. Here is guidance on pair programming and using VS Code to collaborate remotely.

You can get 1 bonus point by submitting the entire project by Monday 10/07.

In this project, you will write a program that measures typing speed. Additionally, you will implement typing autocorrect, which is a feature that attempts to correct the spelling of a word after a user types it. This project is inspired by typeracer.

Final Product

Our staff solution to the project can be interacted with at cats.cs61a.org. Feel free to try it out now. When you finish the project, you'll have implemented a significant part of this yourself, including the multiplayer mode!

Download Starter Files

You can download all of the project code as a zip archive. This project includes several files, but your changes will be made only to cats.py. Here are the files included in the archive:

• cats.py: The typing test logic.
• utils.py: Utility functions for interacting with files and strings.
• ucb.py: Utility functions for CS 61A projects.
• data/sample_paragraphs.txt: Text samples to be typed. These are scraped Wikipedia articles about various subjects.
• data/common_words.txt: Common English words in order of frequency.
• data/words.txt: Many more English words in order of frequency.
• data/final_diff_words.txt: Even more English words!
• data/testcases.out: Test cases for the optional Final Diff extension.
• cats_gui.py: A web server for the web-based graphical user interface (GUI).
• gui_files: A directory of files needed for the graphical user interface (GUI).
• multiplayer: A directory of files needed to support multiplayer mode.
• favicons: A directory of icons.
• images: A directory of images.
• ok, cats.ok, tests: Testing files.
• score.py: Part of the optional Final Diff extension.

Logistics

The project is worth 20 points. 19 points are for correctness and 1 point is for submitting Phases 1 & 2 by the checkpoint date.

You will turn in the following files:

• cats.py

You do not need to modify or turn in any other files to complete the project. To submit the project, submit the required files to the appropriate Gradescope assignment.

You may not use artificial intelligence tools to help you with this project or reference solutions found on the internet.

For the functions that we ask you to complete, there may be some initial code that we provide. If you would rather not use that code, feel free to delete it and start from scratch. You may also add new function definitions as you see fit.

However, please do not modify any other functions or edit any files not listed above. Doing so may result in your code failing our autograder tests. Also, please do not change any function signatures (names, argument order, or number of arguments).

Throughout this project, you should be testing the correctness of your code. It is good practice to test often, so that it is easy to isolate any problems. However, you should not be testing too often, to allow yourself time to think through problems.

We have provided an autograder called ok to help you with testing your code and tracking your progress. The first time you run the autograder, you will be asked to log in with your Ok account using your web browser. Please do so. Each time you run ok, it will back up your work and progress on our servers.

The primary purpose of ok is to test your implementations.

If you want to test your code interactively, you can run

 python3 ok -q [question number] -i 

You can also use the debugging print feature in OK by writing

 print("DEBUG:", x) 

Getting Started Videos

To see these videos, you should be logged into your berkeley.edu email.

Phase 1: Typing

Reminder: Throughout the project, we will only be making changes to functions in cats.py.

Problem 1 (1 pt)

Implement pick. This function selects which paragraph the user will type for the typing test. It takes three parameters:

• paragraphs: a list of potential paragraphs (strings)
• select: a function that evaluates a paragraph and returns True if it meets certain criteria, and False otherwise
• k: a non-negative integer representing the index of the desired paragraph among those that meet the criteria

The pick function returns the kth paragraph that satisfies the select function. If no such paragraph exists (because k is greater than or equal to the number of qualifying paragraphs), then pick returns an empty string.

Hint: Don't worry about the specific implementation of the select function. Just assume it takes a paragraph as input and returns True orFalse. Reminder: Indexing starts at 0. If k is 0, we want to pick the first qualifying paragraph.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 01 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 01
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Problem 2 (1 pt)

Implement the about function, which takes a list of subject words. It returns a function that, when given a paragraph, checks whether the paragraph contains any of the words from the subject list. The returned function will return True if any of the words in the subject list are found in the paragraph and False otherwise.

Once about is implemented, we can use the function it returns as the select argument in pick. This is useful because it allows us to filter paragraphs based on whether they contain any words from the subject list provided to the about function. This functionality will be useful as we continue to develop our typing test.

To ensure accurate comparisons, you will need to:

1. Ignore case (treat uppercase and lowercase letters as equivalent).
2. Ignore punctuation in the paragraph.
3. Only check for exact matches of the words in the subject list, not substrings. For example, instances of "dogs" in paragraph should not match "dog" in subject.

Hint: Use the split, lower, and remove_punctuation functions in utils.py.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 02 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 02
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Problem 3 (2 pts)

Implement accuracy, which takes both a typed paragraph and a source paragraph. It returns the percentage of words in typed that exactly match the corresponding words in source. Case and punctuation must match as well. "Corresponding" here means that two words must occur at the same indices in typed and source; the first words of both must match, the second words of both must match, and so on.

A word in this context is any sequence of characters separated from other words by whitespace. Therefore, treat sequences like "dog;" as a single word.

If typed is longer than source, then the extra words in typed that have no corresponding word in source are all incorrect.

If both typed and source are empty, then the accuracy is 100.0. If typed is empty but source is not empty, then the accuracy is zero. If typed is not empty but source is empty, then the accuracy is zero.

In the actual typing test, typed represents what the player has typed, and source is the paragraph they are attempting to replicate.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 03 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 03
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Problem 4 (1 pt)

Implement wpm, which computes the words per minute, a measure of typing speed, given a string typed and the amount of elapsed time in seconds. Despite its name, words per minute is not based on the number of words typed, but instead the number of groups of 5 characters, so that a typing test is not biased by the length of words. The formula for words per minute is the ratio of the number of characters (including spaces) typed divided by 5 (a typical word length) to the elapsed time in minutes.

For example, the string "I am glad!" contains ten characters (not including the quotation marks). The words per minute calculation uses 2 as the number of words typed (because 10 / 5 = 2). If someone typed this string in 30 seconds (half a minute), their speed would be 4 words per minute.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 04 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 04
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✂️

Time to test your typing speed! You can use the command line to test your typing speed on paragraphs about a particular subject. For example, the command below will load paragraphs about cats or kittens. See the run_typing_test function for the implementation if you're curious (but it is defined for you).

python3 cats.py -t cats kittens

You can also try out the web-based graphical user interface (GUI) using the following command. (You may have to use Ctrl+C or Cmd+C on your terminal to quit the GUI after you close the tab in your browser).

python3 cats_gui.py

Phase 2: Autocorrect

In the web-based GUI, there is an "Enable Auto-Correct" option, but right now it doesn't do anything. Let's implement automatic typo correction. Whenever the user presses the space bar, if the last word they typed doesn't match a word in the dictionary but is close to one, then that similar word will be substituted for what they typed.

Problem 5 (2 pts)

Implement autocorrect, which takes a typed_word, a word_list, a diff_function, and a limit. The goal of autocorrect is to return the word in word_list that is closest to the provided typed_word, as determined by diff_function.

Specifically, autocorrect does the following:

• If the typed_word is contained inside the word_list, autocorrect returns that word.
• Otherwise, autocorrect returns the word from word_list that has the lowest difference from the provided typed_word. This difference is the number returned by the diff_function.
• However, if the lowest difference between typed_word and any of the words in word_list is greater than limit, then typed_word is returned instead. In other words, limit sets a maximum threshold on how severe a typo can be for it to still be corrected.

Assume that typed_word and all elements of word_list are lowercase and have no punctuation.

Important: If multiple strings in word_list are tied for the lowest difference from typed_word, autocorrect should return the string that appears earliest (with the smallest index) in word_list.

A diff function takes in three arguments. The first is the typed_word, the second is the source word (in this case, a word from word_list), and the third argument is the limit. The output of the diff function, which is a number, represents the amount of difference between the two strings.

Here is an example of a diff function that computes the minimum of 1 + limit and the difference in length between the two input strings:

>>> def length_diff(w1, w2, limit):
...     return min(limit + 1, abs(len(w2) - len(w1)))
>>> length_diff('mellow', 'cello', 10)
1
>>> length_diff('hippo', 'hippopotamus', 5)
6

Note: For conciseness, some unlocking tests use a ternary operator when defining a lambda function. A ternary operator is the one-line version of an if statement.

For example, in one of the ok tests, we define a diff function as first_diff = lambda w1, w2, limit: 1 if w1[0] != w2[0] else 0. Here, lambda function returns 1 if the first characters of w1 and w2 are different, otherwise it returns 0.

Here is a helpful hint for implementing autocorrect:

Hint: Try using max or min with the optional key argument (which takes in a one-argument function). For example, max([-7, 2, -1], key=abs) would return -7 since abs(-7) is greater than abs(2) and abs(-1).

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 05 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 05
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✂️

Problem 6 (3 pts)

Implement furry_fixes, a diff function that could be passed into the diff_function parameter in autocorrect. This function takes in two strings and returns the minimum number of characters that must be changed in the typed word in order to transform it into the source word. If the strings are not of equal length, the difference in lengths is added to the total difference count.

Here are some examples:

>>> big_limit = 10
>>> furry_fixes("nice", "rice", big_limit)    # Substitute: n -> r
1
>>> furry_fixes("range", "rungs", big_limit)  # Substitute: a -> u, e -> s
2
>>> furry_fixes("pill", "pillage", big_limit) # Don't substitute anything, length difference of 3.
3
>>> furry_fixes("goodbye", "good", big_limit) # Don't substitute anything, length difference of 3.
3
>>> furry_fixes("roses", "arose", big_limit)  # Substitute: r -> a, o -> r, s -> o, e -> s, s -> e
5
>>> furry_fixes("rose", "hello", big_limit)   # Substitute: r->h, o->e, s->l, e->l, length difference of 1.
5

Important: You may not use while, for, or list comprehensions in your implementation. Use recursion.

If the number of characters that must change is greater than limit, then furry_fixes should return any number larger than limit and should minimize the amount of computation needed to do so.

Why is there a limit? From Problem 5, we know that autocorrect will reject any source word whose difference with the typed word is greater than limit. It doesn't matter if the difference is greater than limit by 1 or by 100; autocorrect will reject it just the same. Therefore, as soon as we know the difference is above limit, it makes sense to stop making recursive calls, saving time, even if the returned difference won't be exactly correct.

These two calls to furry_fixes should take about the same amount of time to evaluate:

>>> limit = 4
>>> furry_fixes("roses", "arose", limit) > limit
True
>>> furry_fixes("rosesabcdefghijklm", "arosenopqrstuvwxyz", limit) > limit
True

To ensure that you are correctly saving time by stopping the recursion after limit is reached, there is an autograder test that measures the performance of your solution based on the number of function calls that it makes. If you fail this test, consider adding a base case related to the limit.

Hint: you will need more than one base case to solve this problem.

>>> a = 'strap'
>>> a[0]
's'
>>> a[1:]
'trap'
>>> a[2:]
'rap'
>>> a[1:][1:]
'rap'

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 06 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 06
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✂️

Try enabling auto-correct in the GUI. Does it help you type faster? Are the corrections accurate?

Problem 7 (3 pts)

Implement minimum_mewtations, a more advanced diff function that can be used in autocorrect, which returns the minimum number of edit operations needed to transform the typed word into the source word.

There are three kinds of edit operations, with some examples:

1. Add a letter to typed.

   • Adding "k" to "itten" gives us "kitten".

2. Remove a letter from typed.

   • Removing "s" from "scat" givs us "cat".

3. Substitute a letter in typed for another.

   • Substituting "z" with "j" in "zaguar" gives us "jaguar".

Each edit operation contributes 1 to the difference between two words.

>>> big_limit = 10
>>> minimum_mewtations("cats", "scat", big_limit)       # cats -> scats -> scat
2
>>> minimum_mewtations("purng", "purring", big_limit)   # purng -> purrng -> purring
2
>>> minimum_mewtations("ckiteus", "kittens", big_limit) # ckiteus -> kiteus -> kitteus -> kittens
3

We have provided a template of an implementation in cats.py. You may modify the template however you want or delete it entirely.

Hint: One of the recursive calls in minimum_mewtations will be similar to furry_fixes. However, because minimum_mewtations considers specific types of edits (add, remove, substitute), there will need to be additional recursive calls to handle each of these cases.

If the number of edits required is greater than limit, then minimum_mewtations should return any number larger than limit (such as limit + 1) and should stop making recursive calls once the limit is reached to save time.

These two calls to minimum_mewtations should take about the same amount of time to evaluate:

>>> limit = 2
>>> minimum_mewtations("ckiteus", "kittens", limit) > limit
True
>>> minimum_mewtations("ckiteusabcdefghijklm", "kittensnopqrstuvwxyz", limit) > limit
True

To ensure that your code stops making recursive calls after the limit is reached, there is an autograder test that measures the performance of your solution based on the number of function calls that it makes.

Important: You should not use any helper functions in your implementation of minimum_mewtations. Otherwise the autograder test might fail.

Important: Rememebr to remove the following line of code when you are ready to test your implementation:

assert False, 'Remove this line'

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 07 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 07
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✂️

Try enabling auto-correct and typing again. Are the corrections more accurate?

python3 cats_gui.py

(Optional) Extension: Final Diff (0 pts)

You may optionally design your own diff function called final_diff. Here are some ideas for making even more accurate corrections:

• Take into account which additions and deletions are more likely than others. For example, it's much more likely that you'll accidentally leave out a letter if it appears twice in a row.
• Treat two adjacent letters that have swapped positions as one change, not two.
• Try to incorporate common misspellings.
• Letters near to each other on the keyboard are more commonly substituted.

You can also set the limit you'd like your diff function to use by changing the value of the variable FINAL_DIFF_LIMIT in cats.py.

You can check your final_diff's success rate on a provided dataset of common misspellings by running:

 python3 score.py

If you don't know where to start, try copy-pasting your code for furry_fixes and minimum_mewtations into final_diff and scoring them. Looking at the typos they fixed (and didn't fix) might give you some ideas!

Checkpoint Submission

Check to make sure that you completed all the problems in Phase 1 and Phase 2:

python3 ok --score

Then, submit cats.py to the Cats Checkpoint assignment on Gradescope before the checkpoint deadline.

When you run ok commands, you'll still see that some tests are locked because you haven't completed the whole project yet. You'll get full credit for the checkpoint if you complete all the problems up to this point.

Phase 3: Multiplayer

Typing is more fun with friends! You'll now implement multiplayer functionality, so that when you run cats_gui.py on your computer, it connects to the course server at cats.cs61a.org and looks for someone else to race against.

To race against a friend, 5 different programs will be running:

• Your GUI, which is a program that handles all the text coloring and display in your web browser.
• Your cats_gui.py, which is a web server that communicates with your GUI using the code you wrote in cats.py.
• Your opponent's cats_gui.py.
• Your opponent's GUI.
• The CS 61A multiplayer server, which matches players together and passes messages around.

When you type, your GUI uploads what you have typed to your cats_gui.py server, which computes how much progress you have made and returns a progress update. This server also uploads a progress update to the CS 61A multiplayer server, so that your opponent's GUI can also display your progress.

Meanwhile, your GUI display constantly tries to stay current by requesting your opponent's progress updates from cats_gui.py, which, in turn, retrieves that information from the multiplayer server.

Each player has an id number that is used by the server to track typing progress.

Problem 8 (2 pts)

Implement report_progress, which is called every time the user finishes typing a word. It takes a list of the words typed, a list of the words in the source, the user's user_id, and a upload function that is used to upload a progress report to the multiplayer server. There will never be more words in typed than in source.

Your progress is a ratio of the words in the source that you have typed correctly, up to the first incorrect word, divided by the number of source words. For example, this example has a progress of 0.25:

report_progress(["Hello", "ths", "is"], ["Hello", "this", "is", "wrong"], ...)

Your report_progress function should do two things: upload a message to the multiplayer server and return the progress of the player with user_id.

To upload a message to the multiplayer server, call the upload function on a two-item dictionary containing the keys 'id' and 'progress'. The function should then return the player's progress, which is the ratio of words you computed.

Hint: See the dictionary below for an example of a potential input to the upload function. This dictionary represents a player with user_id 4 and progress 0.6.

{'id': 4, 'progress': 0.6}

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 08 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 08
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Problem 9 (1 pt)

Implement time_per_word, which takes in two arguments:

1. words: a list of words that players are typing.
2. timestamps_per_player: a list of lists where each inner list contains the timestamps indicating when each player finished typing each word in words.

The function should return two values:

• The list of words that the players are typing.
• A list of lists times that stores the durations it took each player to type each word. Specifically, the value at times[i][j]should indicate how long it took player i to type the word at words[j].

Timestamps found in the parameter timestamps_per_player are cumulative and always increasing, while the values in times are differences between consecutive timestamps for each player.

Here's an example: If timestamps_per_player = [[1, 3, 5], [2, 5, 6]], then times would be [[2, 2], [3, 1]].

This is because the first player finished typing each word at timestamps 1, 3, and 5, while the second player finished typing each word attimestamps 2, 5, and 6. So the differences in timestamps are (3-1), (5-3) for the first player and (5-2), (6-5) for the second player. The first value of each list within timestamps_per_player represents the initial starting time for each player.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 09 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 09
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✂️

Problem 10 (3 pts)

Implement fastest_words, which returns which words each player typed fastest. This function is called once all players have finished typing. It takes in a dictionary returned by time_per_word.

The fastest_words function returns a list of lists of words, one list for each player. The list for each player contains the words they typed faster than all the other players. In the case of a tie, the player with the smallest index is considered to be the one who typed it the fastest.

For example, consider two players who typed Just have fun. Player 0 typed 'fun' the fastest (3 seconds), Player 1 typed 'Just' the fastest (4 seconds), and they tied on the word 'have' (both took 1 second). In this case, Player 0 is considered the fastest for 'have' because their index is smaller.

>>> player_0 = [5, 1, 3]
>>> player_1 = [4, 1, 6]
>>> fastest_words({'words': ['Just', 'have', 'fun'], 'times': [player_0, player_1]})
[['have', 'fun'], ['Just']]

Use the helper function get_time (provided) to get an individual time from times. It provides helpful error messages when you try to access a time that doesn't exist.

def get_time(times, player_num, word_index):
    """Return the time it took player_num to type the word at word_index,
    given a list of lists of times returned by time_per_word."""

Important: Make sure your implementation does not mutate the given player input lists. For the example above, calling fastest_words on [player_0, player_1] should not mutate player_0 or player_1.

There might not always be two players, so generalize this function in a way that will allow it to handle an indeterminate number of players.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q 10 -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q 10
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✂️

Congratulations! Now you can play against other students in the course. Set enable_multiplayer to True near the bottom of cats.py and type swiftly!

python3 cats_gui.py

Project Submission

Run ok on all problems to make sure all tests are unlocked and pass:

python3 ok

You can also check your score on each part of the project:

python3 ok --score

Once you are satisfied, submit this assignment by uploading cats.py to the Cats assignment on Gradescope. For a refresher on how to do this, refer to Lab 00.

You can add a partner to your Gradescope submission by clicking on + Add Group Member under your name on the right hand side of your submission. Only one partner needs to submit to Gradescope.

Phase 4: Efficiency (Extra Challenge)

(Optional) Problem EC (0 pt)

Note: This problem is optional and will not worth any points. It is meant to be a extra challenge for those who are interested in improving the efficiency of their code. Only attempt this problem if you have completed all other problems in the project.

During Office Hours and Project Parties, the staff will prioritize helping students with required questions. We will not be offering help with this question unless the queue is empty. In this problem, you will implement memoization decorators that will increase the efficiency of our our program by "remembering" the results of particularly intensive operations.

Make sure you're familiar with the decorators and memoization. If you would like a refresher, open the dropdown boxes below for more information.

>>> def do_twice(original_function):
...     def repeat(x):
...             original_function(x)
...             original_function(x)
...     return repeat

# Printing a value twice
>>> @do_twice
... def print_value(x):
...     print(x)
...
>>> print_value(5)
5
5
# Adding an item to a list twice
>>> lst = []
>>> @do_twice
... def add_to_list(item):
...     lst.append(item)
...
>>> add_to_list(5)
>>> lst
[5, 5]

We will be working with two memoization decorators. memo is a general all-purpose decorator that memoizes the function it annotates. If memo encounters an input it has not seen, it will store the calculated result into its cache. If memo receives an input it has already seen, it will take the stored value in the cache and returns it directly without doing any extra computation. We have provided you with the full implementation of memo.

Your task is to implement memo_diff. memo_diff is a higher-order function that takes in a diff_function and returns another diff function called memoized that, like all diff functions, takes in typed, source, and limit. memoized should do the following:

• When memoized sees a (typed, source) pair for the first time, it should calculate the difference using diff_function and cache that value along with the limit used as a (value, limit) tuple pair.
• If memoized encounters the (typed, source) pair again, it should return the memoized value if the provided limit is less than or equal to the cached limit. Otherwise, the difference should be recalculated, recached, and returned.

Important: When implementing this function, make sure you store pairs of values in the cache with a tuple, not a list. In dictionaries, keys must be immutable (that's why using a tuple is fine, but using a list is not). If you're curious about why memo_diff is different than memo and is implemented in this way, reference the dropdown below:

>>> minimum_mewtations("hello", "hasldfasdfsffsfasdf", 100)
17
>>> minimum_mewtations("hello", "hasldfasdfsffsfasdf", 2)
3

Once you've implemented memo_diff, finish by:

1. Decorating autocorrect with memo.
2. Decorating minimum_mewtations with memo_diff.

Running autocorrect and minimum_mewtations should now be much faster!

Note: If you are failing the autograder tests involving call_count, it is likely that your minimum_mewtations implementation (from Q7) is not having the tightest base cases possible and still needs some optimization. The tests from Q7 are not meant to be strict, so even if you passed the Q7 tests, your base cases might still not be the tightest. Make sure you are not making unnecessary recursive calls. We are being strict about this here because having the tightest base cases is crucial for the efficiency of your code.

Important: Try it yourself first! Only consult the following common mistakes section if you have been stuck on one test case for a while. Otherwise, you might not learn as much from the project.

Note: The autograder takes a bit of time to run, but it should not be longer than 10 seconds.

Before writing any code, unlock the tests to verify your understanding of the question:

python3 ok -q EC -u
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Once you are done unlocking, begin implementing your solution. You can check your correctness with:

python3 ok -q EC
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