A Life Worth Living Challenge

abc · Post by **abc** » Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:24 pm

Hi!
Maybe a very stupid question but:

Is 10 Billion in English:
a) = 10 000 000 000
b) = 10 000 000 000 000

The reason why I ask this is, that www.dict calls me more possible solutions for "billion".
It could be "Billion" or "Milliarde" in German.

Thx
abc

Post by **adum** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:17 am

option a)

abc · Post by **abc** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:51 am

Hi again!

Thx for your answer adum!

I really think I just have the right answer, but it says "incorrect".

So - I need some help again:
Can someone tell me please if it is right, that the population is 1227 at generation 4312.

Thank you in advance!
abc

michuber · Post by **michuber** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:12 am

abc wrote:Can someone tell me please if it is right, that the population is 1227 at generation 4312.

Yes, you should be on the right path.

Grammaton · Post by **Grammaton** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 11:32 am

This game has a really nice Pattern

Looks like a highway

I also have some Problems with this level. I am asking me, if we really should play it until the end or find some way to calculate it. Its not growing linear but maybe we can find the oscillations and calculate it then?

-Grammaton

gfoot · Post by **gfoot** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:55 pm

Heh, I didn't think of looking for a pattern... I just ran the simulation until the right generation.

m!nus · Post by **m!nus** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:02 pm

gfoot wrote:Heh, I didn't think of looking for a pattern... I just ran the simulation until the right generation.

ouch

there's 2 patterns in it which work in different a speed, don't forget this in your calculation.

gfoot · Post by **gfoot** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:06 pm

Heh, well brute force is inelegant, but it only takes a few seconds to run.

m!nus · Post by **m!nus** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:09 pm

I would have done it that way aswell, but the program I used, Life32, only supports, as the name says, 32bit numbers. I was too lazy to do my own implementation and didn't know python back then.

eike42 · Post by **eike42** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:08 am

I've simulated about 15k cycles on my own life implementation (because I did not find a simulation that exports me generation and count for every generation). Then I used brain to find all the periodics and wrote a program to calculate the numbers. After checking against my 15k numbers I let it calculate all the 10 billion numbers (took few days), but looks like the number is incorrect. Damn...

michelleboy · Post by **michelleboy** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:09 pm

answer to the original question is B

MerickOWA · Post by **MerickOWA** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:16 pm

Umm.... 10 billion is 10,000,000,000

as adum posted this is option a) in the user's original post.

tog · Post by **tog** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:04 pm

This ambiguity in English really sucks.

MerickOWA · Post by **MerickOWA** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:14 pm

For this website, the "short scale" of measurement is used.

1 Thousand = 1 000
Millions = 1 Thousand Thousands = 1 000 000
Billion = 1 Thousand Millions = 1 000 000 000

Andr3w · Post by **Andr3w** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:27 pm

what am I doing wrong ?

.. or could it be that the challenge was changed until the last posts in this forum ?

at generation 4312 my population is about 500 ...