A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
Originally posted by Stan James:
I made a triangle of bottle caps 10 on a side, another triangle of 9 on top of that and so on to the solo cap on the top. It takes (n*(n+1))/2 caps to make each layer. I made a little loop to compute 55+45+36 etc for 220 bottle caps.
Is there an f(n) to compute this in one shot instead of the loop?
This is important because I'm only 9 caps from finishing the darned thing, proving that I've been sitting at this desk for one year.
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of the idea. John Ciardi
Originally posted by Ryan McGuire:
There's another option for deriving the polynomial coefficients from a series when you know some number of consecutive values.
(...)
You could use this "algorithm" to re-derive the formulae...
(...)
Originally posted by Ryan McGuire:
There... how about that for more information than needed! :-)
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery