Last week’s problem involved using your geometry/trigonometry skills to find areas of shapes. We start off with a large (black) circle which has a (black) square inscribed in it which in turn has a (red) circle inscribed in it: Let’s start off with the equation for the area of a Read more…
Recently a friend asked why I haven’t put up any new POWs (Problems of the Week). Part of the reason is because I got lazy but the other part is because the show Numb3rs is what inspired me before and I haven’t been watching any reruns lately 😛. Yesterday I Read more…
Here is the answer to last week’s POW: (0! + 1 + 2)! = 24 (-1 + 2 + 3)! = 24 2 * 3 * 4 = 24 (3 – 4 + 5)! = 24 4! / (-5 + 6) = 24 (5 + 6 – 7)! = 24 Read more…
Many people are familiar with the math game 24, but not many know about the sequential triad version. You must make each of the following sequences true by only inserting operators and without changing the order of the numbers: 0 1 2 = 24 1 2 3 = 24 2 Read more…
Assuming a normal JavaScript engine, what could you possibly pass into the following mystery() function that would not thrown an error? As is normal, this answer will be shown a week from when it was posted and will be linked to from here.The answer to this POW can now be Read more…
If you remember the problem, the key is the fact that the problem never said to choose one of the answers from the multiple choice list. Also, the question never said that that question was the one that applied to the multiple choice questions. Having those two facts in mind, Read more…
This Problem of the Week will make you question whether or not multiple choice questions really are easier. Here is the question: Assuming the answer can be selected from the following list, if you were to choose one of the following at random, what is the chance that you would Read more…
To answer last week’s POW, the purpose of the SQL was to generate a random string of letters and numbers. I actually wrote two different JavaScript function that can produce the same results. The following is the slightly more straight-forward solution: The next version is a bit harder to follow Read more…
Someone asked me to quickly write them some code in any language that would accomplish a certain task. The following, which is in PostgreSQL, is the second solution that I came up with after doing the first one in my favorite language, JavaScript: The question is, what does this SELECT Read more…
This answers the Problem of the Week from May 8, 2012. The identity of this well-known computer science function is the binary search. The following is the same code from before with the variables more properly named: To tell you the truth, after using the real names in the function Read more…