goldfarb (07/21/82)
This is a little integer problem related to a mythical practical
situation. Consider that it is only possible to paste one, two,
or three stamps on an envelope. Then tell me which N different
denominations of stamps are required to produce the longest con-
tinuous range of attainable postage values on such letters start-
ing at one cent with an increment of one cent. For example for
N=2, 1 and 3 would combine to produce the values {1,2,3,4,5,6,7}
which is better than 1 and 2 which would only yield
{1,2,3,4,5,6}. I have solutions for N < 9. After that, my algo-
rithm executes in time exceeding the MTBC (mean time between
crashes). I am interested in seeing solutions and execution
times for all values of N and especially those >= 9.
Ben Goldfarb
University of Central Florida
..duke!ucf-cs!goldfarblaura (07/27/82)
when i was a kid one of the neat things i discovered was that it was particularily fun to freak out grown-ups. I spent a lot of time devising new ways to get them to think I was twice as smart as I thought i was, (or twice as gross, or twice as noisy, or...) one of the successes was a deck of six cards, which the stamp problem reminded me of. The first card had the number '1' in the upper left hand corner. the second card had the number '2', the third the number '4' the fourth '8', fifth '16' and sixth '32'. Then you filled in the rest of the cards in such a fashion that the sum of the upper left corners of the cards which contained any given number always added to that number. For example, no other cards would have the number '16' on them, while only cards one and two would have the number '3' and all 6 cards would have the number 63. They made a pretty pattern, too...and it was amazing the number of unsuspecting grownups who were sure i had marked the cards, or had palmed them in such a way to fix their choice of number...for absolutely certain some of them never caught on! It was fun to be the 'wonder kid' at least until I had exhausted my supply of unsuspecting grown-ups... are there other neat mathematical discoveries out there which you made as kids? (I know, this is *not* net.math.reminisce, but something tells me i would have done a better job at learning my times tables if I had come up with this sort of scheme to bamboozle people with) laura creighton decvax!utzoo!laura p.s. Anybody bisect the parellel lines yet? I *cant* and its *driving me crazy*.