https://projecteuler.net/problem=1 For those who thought that Midnight's challenge link wasn't clever enough. Post your solutions in spoilers, please.
This isn't about being clever. It's more about using summations. Spoiler A summation from an index starting from 1 to 333 of the form 3n gives all multiples of 3. A summation from 1 to 199 of 5n gives multiples of 5. Add their sums together and subtract their intersection(multiples of 15) and you get 233,168. A small child could have done this.
This question is about summation. This is a series of challenges like Midnight's. Only this one is much harder. It requires programming for many problems, which does require cleverness.
It's only harder because you need some background in math with many don't have plus extra knowledge on how to program(which is useless unless we're looking for practical applications). This is a test of "do you know your definitions?" and "program that shit once you know them". It does not require cleverness despite the fact that there are clever ways to solve these problems.
You know full well that's not what I was referring to. If you can find clever ways to solve problems, you're clever. A problem that requires you to be clever to reach the answer is a clever question. That's it. The nature of the problem and the knowledge required for it doesn't matter.
My point is that most(haven't looked through all of them yet) of these problems don't require cleverness to throw out a solution. Maybe I've become too desensitized with little math problems like this with all the proofs I've seen. I do just about every kind of math 6 days a week so...>>
Under Project Euler's mission statement: I've written my program but should it take days to get to the answer? Absolutely not! Each problem has been designed according to a "one-minute rule", which means that although it may take several hours to design a successful algorithm with more difficult problems, an efficient implementation will allow a solution to be obtained on a modestly powered computer in less than one minute. Does it matter if it takes more than one minute to solve? Of course not, but that should provide the impetus to return to the problem and see how you can improve your approach. But remember that once you've solved a particular problem you will be able to access a thread relating to that problem and it is here that you may be able to pick some tips from others that have solved it. At its core, this is a programming cleverness test.
This is super rad; I'm a CSCI major but I have to take a break from programming classes for some prerequisite courses, so it's good to have something to keep me on my toes. Thanks for sharing~
