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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: General/Updates
[SPEC] Postcard Code Solution?
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Salkunh
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 		with the discussion on E i tried to make the 24 digit number fit into a giant letter E just using the numbers...Crystal Maze stylee...but then I gave up and decided i like this solution and from now on i shall call it THE solution Smile
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:30 am
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erekose
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 		You know this is a perfect example of the nature of args, the combined collaboration of hundreds of people skilled in every field from maths to literature to nanotechnology couldn't solve this puzzle. And just when it looks hopeless, a newcomer with a fresh perspective comes along, looks at what we have done so far, and in a flash of insight that both shocks and awes the minds of all involved, produces an answer that is elegant, accurate, and that should have been worked out by us months ago.

Spankit, I bow down to your awesome puzzle solving power Worshippy
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:18 am
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kelsey_requiem
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 		WHERE'VE YOU BEEN SPANKIT?! You are the one weve been waiting for in the past months! The prophecy had it that once a a great solver will emergre from the Sea of Noob, one, who is so good that can't be harmed by fish... And now to fulfill the prophecy
* hands Spankit a secret, ancient anti-trout cape *
you can wear that one now, tho youre new here, you wont get trouted. [by me, anyway...] Smile
gosh. great find.
a great, great, great, great, great job on solving that!
Locky!

[edit: untypoed the word "ancient" ]

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:21 am
Last edited by kelsey_requiem on Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:24 am; edited 1 time in total
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RI_Barnica
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JebJoya wrote:
Okay, you could base the numbers on multiples of the speed of light, but you can only define speed in that way, there is no other constant thing you could use (unless someone can think of a ratio that I can't at the moment?)


Well, pi is unitless (ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter), as is e (although damned if I know what that actually represents... something about area under a hyperbolic curve? or the ratio of the slopes or something like that). Also, you could use something about the ratio of the mass of a proton to the mass of an electron (is there a name for that? must be, right?). Final note... best choice would be to put these in binary, the lowest (and thus, most universal?) base.

JebJoya wrote:
Meh, sorry, I'm bored and also an argumentative sod... Sorry about that :)Jeb


Yeh, me too! I'nt it beautiful?
Laughing
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:22 am
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belga
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 		Mathematically, e is usually defined by the following equation:

e = limn->infinity (1 + 1/n)n.

Its value is approximately 2.718281828459045...
mre info http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.e.html[/url]
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:49 am
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Mikeyj
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firefox wrote:

pain pain pain

in good intentions that topic was wraught, yet down o-so low, was it ever brought...


OMG you were right Firefox...it's happening again...someone call an emergency mod!
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 8:03 am
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Worker
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RI_Barnica wrote:
[Edit: Well actuall, you get 6.02223066 EE23, whereas Avogadro's number is 6.0221419900 EE23. But, heck, what's 0.001472% difference among friends? ]

While I agree that this is a great 'solve', and that "close enough" is good enough to stop worrying about this number, the fact that it isn't 100% bugs me.

[great!:] THE NUMBER times e = (almost) Avogadro's number
[not-so-great:] Avogadro's number divided by e != THE NUMBER

[meta]
So how did the PMs get THE NUMBER? Did they divide Avogadro's number by e, and then change some random digits just for the heck of it? If so, shouldn't we consider looking at the reason they did this? (And by "we" I mean, "you crazy number-obsessed fanatics" Wink)
[/meta]

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:42 am
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JebJoya
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Quote:
On another, more agumentative sod-like point, all the metric units of mesurement except the kilogram are already based on constants, eg the metre is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in an absolute vacuum during a time interval of exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. (and before you ask, the second is also based on a constant Smile )


Yeah, it has been defined as that in retrospect, and the second is only based on the approximate time that it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun. However...

RI_Barnica wrote:
Well, pi is unitless (ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter), as is e (although damned if I know what that actually represents... something about area under a hyperbolic curve? or the ratio of the slopes or something like that). Also, you could use something about the ratio of the mass of a proton to the mass of an electron (is there a name for that? must be, right?).


You have a point, it was late last night when I wrote that, and I couldn't think of any decent ratios... e I guess would be the best to use with PxC Wink

exp(x) is also defined for real numbers as e^x, and when differentiated leaves you with exp(x) (ie the gradient at any particular point is equal to its x-coordinate.). There are a number of infinite sequences and such which can derive e, though belga's is the only one I can think of at the moment. (what gets fun with exp is when you start throwing in imaginary numbers... (sum(n=1 to infinity) of 1/n^s) proving s=1/2+ix anyone?)

Jeb
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:52 am
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Mikeyj
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JebJoya wrote:

Yeah, it has been defined as that in retrospect, and the second is only based on the approximate time that it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun.


a second is in fact and I quote "The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom", and whilst we're at it moles have been mentioned in terms of hydrogen atoms, but this is tricky to weigh, so in fact it's "the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12"

Shocked I'm doing it now aren't I? Bang Head

[edit] read this back and sound smug and awful...will leave it to teach myself humility
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:18 am
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Seej
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Mikeyj wrote:
JebJoya wrote:

Yeah, it has been defined as that in retrospect, and the second is only based on the approximate time that it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun.


a second is in fact and I quote "The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom", and whilst we're at it moles have been mentioned in terms of hydrogen atoms, but this is tricky to weigh, so in fact it's "the amount of substance of a system which contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilogram of carbon 12"

Shocked I'm doing it now aren't I? Bang Head

[edit] read this back and sound smug and awful...will leave it to teach myself humility


Hooo dear, please, all of you stop it Smile. You've all picked apart each others points so I figure you're all equal (and just to make sure Mikeyj doesn't get the last word; radioactive decay is random so there's a finite level of accuracy to which the second can be defined with a caesium clock). Equally, our definition of a kilogram is totally arbitrary - when they were designing the SI base units (kg, s, A, m) at some point they just had to pick an amount to work from and all our other measurements are based on these. Now can we leave it? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

Worker: perhaps it's just down to some sort of rounding error. Tried a couple of combinations and didn't get the answer I wanted, but I still think this is far and away the most likely explanation of that number that I've seen - being able to do basic manipulation of physical constants to get (almost) where we want to be is far more convincing than any other spec I've ever read simply because the PMs can't possibly affect those constants.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:46 am
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Worker
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Seej wrote:
perhaps it's just down to some sort of rounding error. Tried a couple of combinations and didn't get the answer I wanted, but I still think this is far and away the most likely explanation of that number that I've seen

I agree that this is the most likely explanation. So, as an encore to this almost-solution, let's all put some effort into finding the exact values and rounding errors that were used to produce the number. If this is truly the right answer(*), then those values should be obtainable. And if we can't find the values, then... well... yeah.

(*) All this is ofcourse assuming that the number is a puzzle and that there is something that is worth figuring out about it.

PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:41 pm
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Atrophied
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 		ok...
In the manner of Bill 'n' Ted

We're not worthy, we're not worthy... etc

Worshippy Worshippy Worshippy Worshippy

I think that says it all.

Well done Spankit.
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 3:58 pm
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prufrock
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Quote:
ok...
In the manner of Bill 'n' Ted

We're not worthy, we're not worthy... etc


Atrophied -- Since we all seem to be picking apart the tiniest detail of each other's posts, I absolutely MUST correct you and say that you're thinking of Wayne's World, not Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (although I prefer Bogus Journey, as the scene where they play a game of electric football against death = classic!).

Razz Laughing
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:57 pm
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Atrophied
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prufrock wrote:
Quote:
ok...
In the manner of Bill 'n' Ted

We're not worthy, we're not worthy... etc


Atrophied -- Since we all seem to be picking apart the tiniest detail of each other's posts, I absolutely MUST correct you and say that you're thinking of Wayne's World, not Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (although I prefer Bogus Journey, as the scene where they play a game of electric football against death = classic!).

Razz Laughing


Gah.. I knew I was wrong, but I couldn't for the life of me remember where it had actually come from.

Embarassed
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:58 pm
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Conner
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 		I've been thinging about the post card number, it aint right you know...
We know one thing for certain the number on the postcard. We don't know what precise figures they used for e and Avogadros. One would assume that they would use the most precise value of Avogadros (I didnt think Avogadros can be calculated using an expansion, its more a standard isnt it?) available and the necessary number of digits for e to get the 24 digits for the post card. With that in mind I had a look at what value they might have used for Avogadros:
Number on postcard = N = 221545484848465100503215
Avogadros = A = 602213670000000000000000
e = e = 2.71828182845904523536028747135266249775724709369995
N = A/e

They will have used numbers rounded to a certain number of digits, then chopped off the end of the 24 digit number to remove the decimal places (Unless they've been super clever and found values for e and A that produce a whole number, doesnt seem right because of what follows). So we should find that for some rounded value of A we will get a number of e that doesnt become innacurate before the first digit to alter when rounding of N is taken into account. Like this:
Code:
602213670000000000000000/221545484848465100503215 = 2.718239418925229449632132665364861408645561419910613621660746795073163715761211102400761943103518341
602213670000000000000000/221545484848465100503216 = 2.7182394189252294496321203959231222349581786259707085598331823783138222371560969416264884095784361388
602213670000000000000000/221545484848465100503214 = 2.7182394189252294496321449348066005823329442139612809655322523286787869480245119369795891740055167347

This is showing that using the most accurate standard for A and taking into account rounding in the postcard number, we are unable to produce a value for e that is accurate all the way to the number if digits required to produce the 24 digit post card number. Yes but what if they used a rounded value for A, I hear you ask? Doesnt matter, no matter how you round it you dont get near the correct value for e up to the point where it ceases to matter (ie the number of digits reqd to produce N up to the decimal point). I could list it out here but ill spare you. I'll just point out a good arbitrary precision calculator I found: http://www.haxialsoftware.com/products/calculator/

So although difference is small I believe it to be significant... One last thing:
the number for N you should get:
221542028385403379681360 the number you actulally get:
221545484848465100503215
the difference is: 3456463061720821855
do a search for: 34564630 in google and you get one page with this in the address: 1010111001101000110100000111011
is that significant? is it normal? help, I have no idea

PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 10:47 am
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