It's Just Maths

Forget 42, here are The Ten Coolest Numbers.

Suprisingly, I am not very good at Maths, despite the fact I ended up in IT, so I don't understand much of what that page talks about.

But I did think that the Monster Group was cool.

AutoTwit

I made this: AutoTwit.

It let's you update Twitter automatically.

Write a Twitter post, and then schedule when you want to update Twitter ... hourly, daily, weekly.

Twitter == Pointless
AutoTwit == Automatically Pointless

DOH. Link was broken.

It's just maths

For various reasons, I have found myself faced with some rather complex problems of a mathematical nature. Namely, what are all the unique combinations of an array of elements [a,b,c,d] => ab, bc, acd & etc etc. You get the idea.

I can compute the answer, but I am using recursion and it breaks my computer quite fast. 8 elements takes 30 seconds and 9 elements ... well, I gave up waiting after 5 minutes.

Some research for a better algorihtm led me to complexity theory and specifically a set of problems known as NP-complete or Non-deterministic Polynomial time.

From our friends at Wikipedia:

In computational complexity theory, NP ("Non-deterministic Polynomial time") is the set of decision problems solvable in polynomial time on a non-deterministic Turing machine. Equivalently, it is the set of problems whose solutions can be "verified" by a deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time.

My knowledge finds it's limit at Wikipedia ... going through some of the theories to try and find some sort apporimation alogirthm is doing my head in. If any of the mathematically inclined what to take a stab at it I will buy you many beers.

Did you know there is such a thing as recreational mathematics?

Madness.

Update: now I am looking at Diophantine linear equations. Don't ask.