MATHS is a powerful tool and mindset. Used by cool peeps to work neato stuffs out that makes nice things like bridges werk.
<Jonneh> my friends mom is a maths teacher at my old college <Jonneh> she's helping me learn MATHS <Jonneh> i nearly put METHS
The following is a simple example from Ultima of how MATHS winz, using only a guess at some start values you can work out the amount of times you theoretically need to fold a piece of paper to reach the average height of the MOON within an error of about one fold (which by the time of the last fold is quite a big margin of error :))) )
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define papthck 0.00001
#define moondst 382500000.0
/**
* getfolds.c
*
* Lets work out the paper folds to some distance!
* Default to the number of folds to the MOON.
* Ultima (2005-10-22)
* */
long getfolds (double start, double end);
/*
* 1st arg thickness of material, followed by distance to reach.
*/
int main (argc, argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
if (argc == 1) {
printf("No. of paper folds to MOON: %ld\n",getfolds(papthck,moondst));
}
else {
printf("No. of folds: %ld\n",getfolds(atof(argv[1]),atof(argv[2])));
}
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
/*
* Get that sassy value you want.
*/
long getfolds (start, end)
double start;
double end;
{
static long number = 0;
if (start >= end) return number;
start *= 2;
number ++;
getfolds(start, end);
return number;
}
Which is silly, because everybody knows you can only fold a piece of paper 8 times.
Other great ones to do are work out the minimum amount of "stuff" you need to encode all of the worlds recorded knowledge including replications by estimating the size of the web and books in libraries etc... then thinking of a small scheme to encode the text, such as spin on an electron etc. Hmmmmm I might have a go at doing this one now :)
THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS WITH M A T H S.....!!!!!!111!!1