Results 1 to 6 of 6
Thread: Racking my brain
- 07-22-2011, 03:43 AM #1
Member
- Join Date
- Jul 2011
- Posts
- 5
- Rep Power
- 0
Racking my brain
I have been racking my brain for the past 2 1/2 hours trying to figure this out, I need to write a program to calculate and print the number of weeks that it will take to reach a total of one million dollars or greater if you are exponentially increases your money each week, meaning you have a penny the first week, then two pennies the next and four pennies the third week. Any ideas or help would be appreciated that will get me started. I know I have to write a while statement, but that is about all I know at this point.
- 07-22-2011, 03:47 AM #2
Inside the loop increment a count, increment money value. Surely it is not that hard to work out what the condition of the while loop is.
-
What steps would you take if you had to solve it on paper without using Java? Often that's the best way to start a problem like this because it can get you to a workable algorithm.
- 07-22-2011, 07:55 AM #4
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
- Location
- Voorschoten, the Netherlands
- Posts
- 14,422
- Blog Entries
- 7
- Rep Power
- 29
Are you allowed to solve the problem without using a loop? If so, note that the number of pennies is functionally dependent on the number of weeks, i.e. p= pow(2, w) where p and w are the number of pennies and the week number starting at zero. So, if you want to know w where p == 1000000 --> w = 2log(1000000), so w =~ 20.
kind regards,
JosBuild a wall around Donald Trump; I'll pay for it.
- 07-22-2011, 07:58 AM #5
Bloody mathematicians!
- 07-22-2011, 08:17 AM #6
- Join Date
- Sep 2008
- Location
- Voorschoten, the Netherlands
- Posts
- 14,422
- Blog Entries
- 7
- Rep Power
- 29
Bookmarks