Ask Me Questions Options

[Toaster Boy]

Why can't I sleep.

[GustafasChild]

Is it odd that I'm not excited for tomorrow? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lalaeyes.gif)


...And that Mom gave me some sleepy tea, and I'm still not tired?

[Saffy]

It's Christmas, it's like the hardest night of the year to fall asleep.

Not entirely odd. Christmas just isn't as fun when you're older (IMG:style_emoticons/default/lalasad.gif) It's less fun for me now too, because I could just buy stuff where as before it was my main source of expensive items.

[GustafasChild]

But I'm only 13? ...And I don't get to buy things all that often either :]


...I s'pose I'll be excited tomorrow morning

[Saffy]

That or you're starting to get less excited as a method of surviving the wait.

[GustafasChild]

It might've been the fact that I spent the past few days playing Sims, so the days went by fast....And I guess that could also explain why it doesn't feel like Christmas is tomorrow?

[Saffy]

You'll find out just a few moments before you open presents :)

[Toaster Boy]

What language did Saffy take?

[Saffy]

I've taken Spanish and French. Though you have to take French up until and including grade 9.

[GustafasChild]

Will Saffy explain the thingy in his signature? :3

[Saffy]

Alright, first let's start off with what the ! stands for in math. It's the sign of a factorial. If I have 5! then what that means is multiply 5 by every number less than it until you reach 0. So you get, 5! = 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1. You could also say that 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1, and for that matter 5! = 5 x 4!. Pretty straight forward, although 0! is equal to 1 which seems a bit odd but when you look at what at the purpose of a factorial is it makes sense. Factorials come into use when you want to do probability. (So, 0! is basically saying there are no positions or options so we have the one possibility of nothing.) Let's say you have the letters ABCDE and you want to know how many possible ways there are to sort them, well, you start off with 5 possible options for the first position, then 4 for the second since you've got one less, then 3 for the third since two are in use, followed by 2 for the second last, and ultimately there can only be one option left for the last position.

ABCDE can be arranged in the form: _ _ _ _ _

I could have DCBAE for instance. So going back to the form it looks like...

5 4 3 2 1

You just multiply them and that's how you find how many options there are for rearranging the letters ABCDE using each number once.

The equation I have in my signature takes this a step farther, even though it doesn't look like it's doing much. What I have is a way to organize these possibilities, say alphabetically, and be able to take something like CDBAE and find out how many arrangements come before thus getting its actual 'value'. I can similarly take a number like 61 and find out its arrangement too, though this uses a bit of trial to get the number :) How do we do this though? We assign a ranking to each value.

E = 4
D = 3
C = 2
B = 1
A = 0

Let's use the example CDBAE from before and find out its value :D You would think that we would have (2 3 1 0 4) but we actually don't. It's a bit more complicated because we have to take care of the numbers we've already used, so we have to adjust the ranking every time we use a number.

First Letter
C = 2

E = 3
D = 2
B = 1
A = 0

Do you see what I did there? Everything that was above C was reduced by 1 so that we have the numbers going 3, 2, 1, 0 instead of 4, 3, 1, 0. They follow through without gaps. Let's continue this :D

Second Letter
D = 2

E = 2
B = 1
A = 0

Third Letter
B = 1

E = 1
A = 0

Fourth Letter
A = 0

E = 0

Fifth Letter
E = 0

And there's nothing left. So putting that all together now we'll get: 22100. Then we can put these numbers into the formula I have :D

Value = 4!2 + 3!2 + 2!1 + 1!0 + 0!
Value = 24x2 + 6x2 + 2x1 + 1x0 + 1
Value = 48 + 12 + 2 + 0 + 0
Value = 62

I personally ignore the 0!0 and leave it as 0! so that my values are in the range of 1 to 120, instead of 0 to 119. CDBAE would be the sixty-second arrangement of the letters ABCDE if you assume ABCDE is 1 and EDCBA is 120 (5!).

Essentially the equation I have in my signature is a sort of proof that this all works. So let's actually show that it does :P

5! = 120

5! = 4!4 + 3!3 + 2!2 + 1!1 + 0!
4!4 = 24 x 4 = 96
3!3 = 6 x 3 = 18
2!2 = 2 x 2 = 4
1!1 = 1 x 1 = 1
0! = 1

96 + 18 = 114
114 + 4 = 118
118 + 1 = 119
119 + 1 = 120

And bam! There you go, they equate to the same number! :D I'd happily show you how to do the reverse and take a number to figure out the letters, but I think I've confused you enough. This whole thing started as a math question we had for homework one night in grade 12. You were supposed to do some other way of solving it, but I kept thinking there had to be a formula so I racked myself for nearly a week trying to figure it out. Eventually it just hit me. I wrote a three page explanation and proof then I handed it in. The teacher apparently keeps it at home and shows it off from time to time, so I've been told :)

[Toaster Boy]

The Rune Factory guide isn't bad at all. Why did Saffy think it was bad?

[Saffy]

Poor quality of the images. You can see the pixels.

[Toaster Boy]

Not too bad for me actually. =\ Well, should we have a big HM contest on some game?

[Saffy]

I'd definitely like to, but it's probably worth waiting until a new one comes out.

[Toaster Boy]

What is Saffy good at in M&S?

[Saffy]

To be honest, I've played the game for less than 30 minutes. I tried the running, fencing, jumping, skeetball, and table tennis. I was good at Table Tennis I though, and I liked the jumping too. Nothing I've won yet though.

[Toaster Boy]

I've gotten records in Track, Field, and a lot of other things. :D

Wanna go eat some cake?

[Saffy]

I just had cake and it was awful D:

Maybe if I got more into the game. People were around and it felt a bit awkward to get up in the middle of the room and start doing stuff.

[Toaster Boy]

Play with someone else, much better.

What should I do?