lördag 9 december 2006

Alien fingers

Jag hittade ett kul problem när jag skulle göra knep och knåp för föreningsbladet: "Alien fingers".
Jag löste problemet med gnu linear programming toolkit, men det var nog meningen att man ska lösa det med papper och penna.

problembeskrivning på engelska:

This file solves a riddle: assume an alien performs a calculation

G H
+G H
------
G B G

just like a human in base 10 would calculate 83+83=166
8 3
+8 3
----
1 6 6

Now G, B and H are symbols in the original riddle (heart, flash and something else I forgot).

The question is now: how many fingers does the alien have? Or put it different,
what base does the alien use?.
The approach here is to assume a base N and pose the problem as an integer programming
problem. It is solved with gplk.


Läs mer här.

1 kommentar:

Anonym sa...

Hmm, bidrar med ett nördigt matematikskämt istället....

The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out and says, "Go out and multiply."
Several months pass, and Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes.
"What's the problem?", Noah asks.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.
Noah follows their advice. Some weeks later, he checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, but Noah is a bit confused about the tree-cutting effect and asks
"Want to tell me how the trees helped?"
"Certainly", say the snakes, "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply."