Konstantin Metlov's description of a "perfect" solution to a problem http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v214/metlov.htm reminds me of a recent encounter with another such a solution and such a problem. It is MathsChallenge problem #113. http://www.mathschallenge.net/index.php?section=project&ref=problems&id=113
Don't worry, no spoiler here. The problem is to find the number of non-bouncy (monotone) decimal numbers less than a googol (10^100x). What I consider to be the "perfect" solution does that, and is sufficiently efficient to find the number of monotone numbers less than a googolplex (10^10^100x) in less than 2 milliseconds on a 500 Mhz Pentium 3 laptop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
