On 16 August 2014 16:48, Pierz <pier...@gmail.com> wrote: > I assert this confidently on the basis of my intuitions as a programmer, > without being able to rigorously prove it, but a short thought experiment > should get halfway to proving it. Imagine a lookup table of all possible > additions of two numbers up to some number n. First I calculate all the > possible results and put them into a large n by n table. Now I'm asked what > is the sum of say 10 and 70. So I go across to row 10 and column 70 and > read out the number 80. But in doing so, I've had to count to 10 and to 70! > So I've added the two numbers together finding the correct value to look > up! I'm sure the same equivalence could be proven to apply in all analogous > situations. > >> >> But if your table gives the results of multiplying them, you get a slightly free lunch (actually I have a nasty feeling you have to perform a multiplication to get an answer from an NxN grid ... to get to row 70, column 10, don't you count N x 70 + 10?)
So suppose your table gives the result of dividing them, I'm sure you're getting at least a cheap lunch now? Sorry this is probably complete nitpicking. I can see that the humungous L.T. needed to speak Chinese would require astronomical calculations to find the right answer, which does probably prove the point. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
