On 16 August 2014 16:48, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > I assert this confidently on the basis of my intuitions as a programmer, > without being able to rigorously prove it, but a short thought experiment > should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a lookup table of all possible > additions of two numbers up to some number n. First I calculate all the > possible results and put them into a large n by n table. Now I'm asked what > is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to row 10 and column 70 and > read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had to count to 10 and to 70! > So I've added the two numbers together finding the correct value to look > up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven to apply in all analogous > situations. > >> >> But if your table gives the results of multiplying them, you get a slightly free lunch (actually I have a nasty feeling you have to perform a multiplication to get an answer from an NxN grid ... to get to row 70, column 10, don't you count N x 70 + 10?)
So suppose your table gives the result of dividing them, I'm sure you're getting at least a cheap lunch now? Sorry this is probably complete nitpicking. I can see that the humungous L.T. needed to speak Chinese would require astronomical calculations to find the right answer, which does probably prove the point. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
