King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Tuesday, July 1

Aliens, and big numbers

OK, hands up who's been sitting there since last week trying to work out how many aliens there were.

*puts hand up*

OK, hands up who actually came up with a solution?

*puts hand up*

OK, hands up who's computer wouldn't actually deal the solution as required.

*puts hand up*

Yup. The humble PC, and my programming skill, is too limited for this math. The number is so extraordinarily huge, that it becomes 'infinity' in the computer's opinion (yes, apparently they now have an opinion) at 21 years. And so, for those wimps who didn't try it last week, here is the answer in simple numeric terms and exponential terms.

21,267,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 2.12676e+37 of each sex.

And so this equates to 'a lot.' The earth would become a little crowded.

How did I work it out?

Multiply each alien (male or female) by 4 every step (4 months) and then if it's above year 13 (1+12) take away what the population was at 12 years previously.

Repeat until year 30. Or in this case, year 20.

Like I said last week, yuck.

Meanwhile

Over on Mark at NeonBubble's blog is this image, which tickled me.



Eh? Erm... 42.