Thus said "Sasha Pachev" on Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:07:52 MDT: > You have 100 sheep in a flock and they are all numbered. Each has an > identification tag with a number - 1 through 100. One of them is lost. > Other sheep are scattered over the pasture and cannot be examined in > sequential order of their numbers. Come up with a method that would > allow you to quickly identify the lost sheep. The use of a simple > arithmetical calculator is allowed.
Hopefully its an HP with RPN, but that might violate your roll call rule. :-) Just add up the numbers 1--100 for a total of 5050. Then subtract each sheeps number as you encounter it in the field (hopefully they don't roam back and you double count them). The end result is the missing sheep. This probably isn't the best algorithm, but it seems it would work, no? Andy -- [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 4:16pm up 7:10, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 1.00, 1.00 /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
