Greg Harris

Ranch Hand
+ Follow
since Apr 12, 2001
Merit badge: grant badges
For More
Cows and Likes
Cows
Total received
In last 30 days
0
Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Greg Harris

I'm not familiar with a specific tool that would help you in this antisocial practice, but if you replace the user's default shell with a program that displays that message, then you'd get the desired effect


i think i will try this!
21 years ago
i have SuSE 8.1 Linux and winXP on a Dell Inspiron 8500... no problems, except the wireless card is not working on linux, yet.
visit the www.tuxmoble.com and research your laptop and distrobution.
i formatted my hdd (except for a 30M partition that is required by the laptop), created 2 partitions, reinstalled xp and then installed SuSE.
i originally installed RedHat 8.0, but it had some problems with the nvidia drivers, so i just switched to SuSE... no problems with the graphics.
21 years ago
funny, i live in Georgia... here is our version of winders!
21 years ago
the conversation is much more specific in that version... it is obvious that SUM knew before PRODUCT said anything that PRODUCT could not know the numbers. our version was not so clear.
however, i find it interesting that someone on that thread chose the same numbers that i did (3,8).
my friend wrote a program as well and it seems that the above mentioned (13,16) could be an answer. i will have to tell him about this solution and see what we can come up with.
21 years ago
the product guy never considers (4,7)... only the sum guy considers that because the sum is 11.
product guy considers (3,8) and (4,6).
sum guy considers (3,8) (4,7) and (5,6).
when product guy says he does not know the numbers, sum guy eliminates (4,7).
21 years ago
well, after all my effort, i am not so sure that (3,8) is the answer anymore. a friend came up with (13,16) - which michael posted above - and his reasoning sounds logical.
basically, sum guy gets 29 and then sum guy looks at all the possible pairs
(3,26)
(4,25)
(5,24)
(and so on ... )
notice that they are odd/even.
then sum guy looks at the product of each pair and then factors the product. interestingly, all the pairs except (13,16) can be factored into 3 or more primes. for example:

for (4,25) you have to look at 5^2 as 5*5. the explanation takes longer than i have now, but i think it sounds good.
[ September 05, 2003: Message edited by: Greg Harris ]
21 years ago
to make this easy, let us assume that my answer (3,8) is correct.
Product guy has a prodcut of 24, which means the pairs can be (4,6) or (3,8). obviously, he cannot determine the correct pair without more information.
Product guy says that he does not know the answer.
Sum guy has the sum of 11, which is odd. this means that one number is even and the other number is odd. this means that at least one number is NOT prime (the even number). if both numbers were prime, Product guy could factor the product into the product of 2 primes and then know the answer. this is why it is important that the sum is odd because this is the only way Sum guy can determine anything definite about the two numbers.
Sum guy says, "i know, you would not know the numbers" because he (Sum guy) knows that one of the numbers is even.
the importance of that statement to Product guy is this: with this information, Product guy knows that the sum is odd, and therefore exactly one number is even and one number is odd. because of this fact, Product guy can eliminate (4,6) and the pair must be (3,8).
Product guy says "i know the answer"
with this information, Sum guy knows what Product guy did to determine the pair, so Sum guy knows the pair is (3,8).
the possibilities for Sum guy were (3,8) (4,7) and (5,6).
(5,6) is eliminated becuase the product is 30 and Product guy would not be able to determine between (5,6) and (3,10) which, coincidentally is just (2*3*5) in a different order.
(4,7) is eliminated because the product is 28 and Product guy would have known the answer immediately because the only other pair is (2,14) which is not allowed.
thus, when Product guy says, "now, i know the answer" - Sum guy can eliminate (5,6) and he knows the answer is (3,8).
21 years ago

Originally posted by Junilu Lacar:

I don't quite follow this logic. If you multiply two prime numbers, the product will not be prime either.


sorry, i should have been more clear. if you multiply 2 prime numbers, the product will factor as the product of 2 prime numbers (obviously).
if the product was 21, P would automatically know the numbers were 3 and 7 and therefore the two numbers cannot both be prime.
i started this problem by looking at the products and i even made a table of all the products (even*odd)... after staring at that mess for a while, i made a table of the sums (even+odd) and it made sense.
[ September 04, 2003: Message edited by: Greg Harris ]
21 years ago
your solution sounds correct... however, if that was the case then S would have said, "i know the numbers" as soon as P said, "i do not know the numbers." we would not have needed statements 3 and 4.
with 3 and 8, S needs one more level of cancellation before he can determine which combination gives 11 and P only needs one level to determine 24.
of course, i am taking statement 4 literally based on the language and the placement in the conversation. it looks like S could not determine the answer until P did, and therefore (4,6) are not the numbers.
oh well... i guess we will never know the real answer.
21 years ago
does anyone actually know the answer to this?
i still think 1 must be even and 1 must be odd for S to be able to know anything about the two numbers...
21 years ago
Bert:
i see what you are saying, but with the sum being 17, S has way too many possibilities: (3,14) (4,13) (5,12) (6,11) (7,10) (8,9)... obviously, the set of combinations gets bigger for any sum greater than 17 (up to 101 when it starts getting smaller).
i think the only way P and S can figure out the numbers is if the sum is fairly small so that S can determine his numbers because there are very few combinations for each product, so i think we have to look at it from the sum.
[ September 03, 2003: Message edited by: Greg Harris ]
21 years ago
following my logic, one has to be odd and one has to be even... that is the only way S can know anything about the two numbers. because the sum is odd, S knows that at least one of the numbers is not prime, and therefore P cannot know the answer.
now, assuming that is correct, start writing a table of sums with the even integers in a column and the odd numbers in a row.

obviously, the numbers cannot be (3,4), (4,5), (3,6), (4,7), (5,6) because the product would be 12, 20, 18, 28, 30 and P would know the answer.
the first pair that would not be obvious to P and can still be determined by S are (8,3). the prodcut for P is 24 and there are only 2 possiblilities (8,3) and (4,6).
the last sum that can be determined by S is 11 because there are only 3 pairs (3,8), (4,7) and (5,6) that give the sum... after that, there are too many combinations and S would never know the answer.
so, given (3,8), we have
product = 24, combinations (3,8) (4,6)
sum = 11, combinations (3,8) (4,7) (5,6)
when P says, "i do not know the numbers," S knows that the pair is not (7,4) because that would be 28 and that is the only combination for the product. which leaves (3,8) and (5,6) for S.
when S says, "i know, you won't know the numbers," P knows that at least one number is odd, so that only leave (3,8) for P.
when P says he knows the numbers, S realizes that the numbers are (3,8) because (5,6) would give 30 and P would not have been able to chose between (5,6) and (3,10).
if you write the first 6 or 7 columns and rows of the addition table, you will quickly see that this is the only way S could ever chose 1 pair of numbers. there are numbers at the high end of the table, but those pairs generate unique products and P would have known the answer immediately.
i hope this is clear as mud (and that i am correct)
[ September 03, 2003: Message edited by: Greg Harris ]
21 years ago
this seems too simple, but i think the numbers are 8 and 3.
1. The product is 24, which could be (4,6) or (3,8)
2. The sum is 11, which could be (3,8), (4,7) or (5,6)
When P says, "i do not know the numbers", S now knows that it is not (4,7) because that would be 4*7=28 and P would have known the answer because there is not another pair that would give 28.
Now, S says "you won't know the numbers" and P knows that the sum of the numbers is odd (see prime number idea above). the numbers cannot be (4,6) - so they have to be (3,8).
When P says , "i know the numbers" S knows that the numbers are (3,8) because until the previous step, P did not know the sum was ood. now that P knows the answer, S knows the numbers cannot be (4,6) because P was able to rule out 24=(4,6).
obviously (if my odd/even idea is correct), there are too many combinations for the sum above the first few integers...
of course, i could be totally crazy.
21 years ago
more things i thought of...
1. as i said before, because P does not know the numbers, the product is not prime and therefore the numbers are not prime.
2. because S can say, "you would not know the two numbers," we can assume that 1 number is odd and 1 is even. with 1 odd and 1 even number, the sum is odd, and therefore S also knows that the product is not prime and thus S knows that P could not know the answer. (if the sum was even, the numbers could both be odd, or both even and S would not be able to make this assumption).
i think there has to be a bound for the product or the sum... otherwise we have multiple combinations that reach all the way up to 96*97. of course, there are limits on the combinations when the numbers get too big because the product or the sum would be obvious.
21 years ago
i think we need more information to solve this...
P = product person
S = sum person
we do know that the two numbers are not both primes because the product would be prime and P would know the answer.
when P says he does not know the numbers, S knows that they are not both primes.
obviously, the product will not be numbers such as 30 and 81 because they factor as (2*15, 3*10, 1*30) and (3*27, 9*9, 1*81), which only leave one possibility.
...back to work... more on this later.
[ September 02, 2003: Message edited by: Greg Harris ]
21 years ago