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A Life Worth Living Challenge
Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:24 pm
by abc
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
Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 12:17 am
by adum
option a)
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:51 am
by abc
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
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:12 am
by michuber
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.
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 11:32 am
by Grammaton
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
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:55 pm
by gfoot
Heh, I didn't think of looking for a pattern... I just ran the simulation until the right generation.
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:02 pm
by m!nus
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.
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:06 pm
by gfoot
Heh, well brute force is inelegant, but it only takes a few seconds to run.
Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:09 pm
by m!nus
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.
Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:08 am
by eike42
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...
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:09 pm
by michelleboy
answer to the original question is B
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 7:16 pm
by MerickOWA
Umm.... 10 billion is 10,000,000,000
as adum posted this is option a) in the user's original post.
Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:04 pm
by tog
This ambiguity in English really sucks.
Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 5:14 pm
by MerickOWA
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
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:27 pm
by Andr3w
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 ...