Problem 017

[nicolas.patrois]

Maybe he’s a spoiler instead.

[meesterfly]

Hello I can't spell out numbers either \o/

[jesduarte]

Unless I misunderstood something, the instructions for problem 17 are incorrect. It says:

If all the numbers from 1 to 1000 (one thousand) inclusive

My solution, which was accepted, does not include "one thousand". Hence, the instructions should not say "inclusive". I spent some time trying to figure out why my answer was not accepted and then it occurred to me that "one thousand" should probably be excluded since many other problems involved half-open intervals rather than closed intervals. Thanks.

[Bubbler]

No, the question says the right thing. I get the correct answer only after adding 11("one thousand") at the end, so if your solution is accepted without counting it, you are actually getting a wrong answer which is off by 11.

...since many other problems involved half-open intervals rather than closed intervals.

I would agree with this part, considering so many "under XXX" questions seen so far, but P17 is an odd case.

[Dyscalculia]

Same, I've solved it and I included number 1000 in the count. So, there's an error in your code.

[jesduarte]

Looks like I misspelled "forty" as "fourty" in some places. I can now verify that indeed "one thousand" is included. Though I already had the correct answer, it was a case of being rewarded for "bad" behavior.

[joshstrange]

Ok, I'm going crazy here. I wrote my code in Javascript and I have the following spellings:

Code: Select all

		1: 'one',
		2: 'two',
		3: 'three',
		4: 'four',
		5: 'five',
		6: 'six',
		7: 'seven',
		8: 'eight',
		9: 'nine',
		10: 'ten',
		11: 'eleven',
		12: 'twelve',
		13: 'thirteen',
		14: 'fourteen',
		15: 'fifteen',
		16: 'sixteen',
		17: 'seventeen',
		18: 'eighteen',
		19: 'nineteen',
		20: 'twenty',
		30: 'thirty',
		40: 'forty',
		50: 'fifty',
		60: 'sixty',
		70: 'seventy',
		80: 'eighty',
		90: 'ninety',
		1000: 'onethousand'

I can send my code to someone if they can look at it. I am off by 240 from the correct answer (I looked up the correct answer but haven't entered it yet). I've read every post here and checked the spelling multiple times but I can't seem to figure out what is going on. Every single number + length that people have posted I have had as well. I AM using "and" between the hundreds and the tens place. Any help would be much appreciated, thank you!

[dawghaus4]

Is your program's result high or low?

Have you had your program give you totals for small ranges of number (e.g. 198 to 203) for which you have hand counted the result.

Tom

[joshstrange]

Ok, I feel like a moron. I had a friend at work look it over and notice that I was putting 'and' before number < 100 and > 19 so 'andtwentyone'.

[AndreasDavour]

Can someone British please clarify how they use "and"?

I know this have been beaten to death, but the problem formulation is not clear. I have no beef with British English, but the problem clearly is not "foreigner proof"

My solution is off by 27, which is a multiple of 3 and I suspect that mean I'm misusing "and".

Let me clarify my question. I print the numbers, and for all numbers above 100, I add 3 for the "and". Is that grammatically wrong?

[jaap]

Can someone British please clarify how they use "and"?

I know this have been beaten to death, but the problem formulation is not clear. I have no beef with British English, but the problem clearly is not "foreigner proof"

My solution is off by 27, which is a multiple of 3 and I suspect that mean I'm misusing "and".

Let me clarify my question. I print the numbers, and for all numbers above 100, I add 3 for the "and". Is that grammatically wrong?

Does 200 have an 'and' ?

[AndreasDavour]

Hmm. Looks like I did not take out the exception on the even hundreds, and added in "and" on those as well. Thanks for the heads up on that. Now I guess I have bigger problems as now my results differ by way more that it originally did.

[AndreasDavour]

I feel I need to discuss this more explicitly. Is there a assigned place where code snippets and such can be posted, as this is not the place?

My result differ from the correct I looked up by a measly three.

[Georg]

https://projecteuler.net/thread=17;page=9

[AndreasDavour]

The problem with that place it is only available once you have posted the correct solution...

Anyway. I took a less compact approach and got the correct number.

[BlivetWidget]

I would like to propose a small edit to the problem which I think may clarify it a bit. Currently the description only gives test cases which are ambiguous wrt counting "and". Allow me to demonstrate:

[*]342 (three hundred and forty-two) contains 23 letters if you count the "and" but not the spaces, and 23 letters (again) if you count the spaces but not the "and"
[*]115 (one hundred and fifteen) contains 20 letters if you count the "and" but not the spaces, and 20 letters (again) if you count the spaces but not the "and"
[*]Single-digit numbers have neither spaces nor "and"

So, the instructions are clear wrt not counting spaces, and you can tell the user to RTFM until the cows come home, but I think replacing 115 with, say, 100 will tighten up the instruction and head off some level of confusion for some users. Anyway, thanks for reading.

[sjhillier]

I would like to propose a small edit to the problem which I think may clarify it a bit. Currently the description only gives test cases which are ambiguous wrt counting "and". Allow me to demonstrate:

...

Thanks, it's a good point, but given that this is now a rather old problem, and also more than 100,000 people have solved it in its current form, I'd be reluctant to make a change at this stage.

[BlivetWidget]

Understandable, but I think it's sometimes worth considering the new users who start at the beginning as I'm doing. And it's no change to the problem itself, just the note at the bottom. But it's up to you, I just saw an opportunity for clarity and wanted to point it out.

[hk]

In my opinion "Do not count spaces or hyphens." is clear enough and I fail to see why you nevertheless start counting them again.

[BlivetWidget]

In my opinion, my post was clear enough in explaining that the instructions were correct but had room for improvement. I stated this explicitly, yet you came away from it confused. This is a perfect analogy for the problem we're discussing

Please read my post again, and I think you'll see I'm only trying to suggest an improvement. If you can't see an improvement in using test cases which will only be passed by the correct code, well, I can't help you there.