From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-02-29T02:08:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Math problem

On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/27/08, Pit Capitain <pit.capitain@gmail.com> wrote:
>  > 2008/2/27, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@gmail.com>:
>  >
>  > > Not exactly the fastest way to do it empirically, why random.
>  >
>  > > (...)
>  >
>  >  Rick, are you sure?
>  >
>
>  Well except in the case where some ZERO cleverly seeds the random
>  number generator to produce the right random numbers, yes!  A very
>  slight modification:
>
>   def init_counts
>    zero =  0
>
>    @counts = Hash.new(zero)
>   end
>
>  produces:
>
>
>  father: 48 daughter: 12
>  Father is 48 years old, Daughter is 12.
>
>  rick: 12 loops
>  thomas: 19467 loops
>
>
>  Of course, being random, the thomas count varies, while the rick count
>  stays at 12.
>
>  And then I much prefer the algebraic solution I worked out in a few
>  seconds on paper when the question was first posed.
>
>  I leave to others the pleasure of discovering the details of your trick. <G>
>
>
>
>
>  --
>  Rick DeNatale
>

I think Rick's approach is best and makes the most sense.  We make a
couple of assumptions, but it's very quick (compared to mine <shrug>).
 I don't think, however, it would scale to more dimensions (i.e.
comparing x and y and z and maybe even w).  The speed difference,
though, for this problem, is markedly different (like a factor of
four) .

Todd