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magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
My boss wants a group photo of our office staff, nothing fancy, just the 15 of us standing in a line.
He has asked me to decide who should stand next to whom. I don’t know whether to arrange them boy-girl, boy-girl, whether to do it by height or whether there is a better arrangement. To save time I have a photo of each member of staff, it only takes me a second to rearrange them and consider the effect of the result. How long will it take me to consider all the possibilities? |
magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
.. I've just realised that this is going to take longer than I thought!
To reduce the possibilities, I'm going to assume that I will be first in line! |
dlhoyt Regular user 176 Posts |
I hope you have a lot of time available -- you should finish in a little more than 2762 years.
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Steve Martin Inner circle 1119 Posts |
If you had ten pictures, it would take you exactly 42 days.
Fifteen pictures would take you almost 42 thousand years. It's an absolute shocker of a result, isn't it?
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein |
magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
Dlhoyt - that's the answer that I got.
Steve, I assume that this is the answer to the original question - I couldn't work it out - my calculator wouldn't handle the numbers! Makes you think though - how many differnt permutations of a deck of 52 playing cards are there? (This is not a question to which I expect an answer!) |
Steve Martin Inner circle 1119 Posts |
Approximately 80 million million million million million million million million million million million.
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein |
TomasB Inner circle Sweden 1144 Posts |
80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000 to be exact.
/Tomas |
magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
...just remember that the next time you shuffle a deck of cards!
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magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
Quote:
On 2006-03-15 07:50, TomasB wrote: How wide is your calculator? |
Steve Martin Inner circle 1119 Posts |
John - Here's a puzzle for you: you don't need a pocket calculator to work that number out. Can you see another way?
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein |
magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
Quote:
On 2006-03-15 12:07, Steve Martin wrote: No, unless "post it on Magic Café and wait for Tomas to give you the right answer" counts?! |
Steve Martin Inner circle 1119 Posts |
Good idea! (Rather than a calculator, I think Tomas probably used that great big electronic thing sitting on or by your desk).
Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein |
magicjohn2278 Special user Isle of Man UK 544 Posts |
Strangely, I never use windows calculator, don't know why, probably something to do with the tiny numbers and symbols - I've just had a quick play with it and it seems quite good, I never realised that it had so many digits!
In the good old days, I always used to use BASIC to do calculations, that way I could write a quick program and print it out to make sure that the numbers that I was using were the ones that I wanted! - Pity windows doesn't come with a simple programming language as standard. (I could never understand visual basic and it costs a packet anyway!) |
dlhoyt Regular user 176 Posts |
John,
Apparently BASIC is still available on Windows. Check out these web sites: http://users.easystreet.com/jkirwan/new/qb.html and http://www.qbcafe.net/english/index.html......qbc_main Dale |
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