Project Euler Forum

Hi,

the problems ask for
Find the difference between the sum of the squares of the first one hundred natural numbers and the square of the sum.
But is should be:
Find the difference between the square of the sum of the first one hundred natural numbers and the sum of the squares?

Did anybody hit the same problem?

ABC_TheCMan

Fortunately, the example makes it clear that the desired answer is the absolute difference.
But yes, that irritated me, too.

the problem is asking:

Find the difference between the sum of the squares of the first one hundred natural numbers and the square of the sum.

which results in a negative value.
the problem should be reformulated to:
Find the difference between the square of the sum of the first one hundred natural numbers and the sum of the squares.

right?!!

"Difference" in that context means find the absolute difference
see here:
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=1614

I didn't understand why in that context it means absolute difference. :/

userProjectEuler wrote:the problem is asking:

Find the difference between the sum of the squares of the first one hundred natural numbers and the square of the sum.

which results in a negative value.
the problem should be reformulated to:
Find the difference between the square of the sum of the first one hundred natural numbers and the sum of the squares.

right?!!

result = abs( SquareOfSum(100) - SumOfSquares(100) )

If there was any ambiguity, the example should be enough to show that the answer should be positive.

quilan wrote:

userProjectEuler wrote:the problem is asking:

Find the difference between the sum of the squares of the first one hundred natural numbers and the square of the sum.

which results in a negative value.
the problem should be reformulated to:
Find the difference between the square of the sum of the first one hundred natural numbers and the sum of the squares.

right?!!

result = abs( SquareOfSum(100) - SumOfSquares(100) )

If there was any ambiguity, the example should be enough to show that the answer should be positive.

there's no ambiguity. the problem is asking a different thing. there's nothing mentioning that the result must be unsigned. but that is ok.

I deleted my solution... apparently this is not the correct place. The forum in the puzzle is locked. That is so unfortunate. I was rather happy with my O(1) solution...

The second and fourth post in the forum are O(1) too.
Please read the forum first.

Mine was different than both. Please don't be so condescending.

I doubt your solution will be fundamentally different from all posted variations of the sum formulae, but to check, could you please PM me your solution?

You can solve every problem in O(1).

Let x be the solution to problem y. In pseudocode:

### O(1) algorithm to solve problem y:
### t <- x
### output t

Actually, that solution is at least O( log x )

...what? How so? This program is O(1) by definition since its execution time is independent of input (it has no input) and it obviously halts.

How long does it take to output x (hint: if x is an integer, it has O(log |x|) digits )

daniel.is.fischer wrote:How long does it take to output x (hint: if x is an integer, it has O(log |x|) digits )

x is a constant, therefore log|x| is a constant...

But not <=1 unless x only has one digit...

O( 10^9999999999999999) = O(1)

I think his point is that it will take longer to output a 100 digit answer rather than a 2 digit answer.

It's true that it will take longer, but it will also take longer if you have a slower computer... Running time is measured relative to input. The running time of this algorithm is indeed O(|logx|) but O(|logx|) = O(1). Actually I don't even understand what's O(logx) supposed to mean. O(logn) means that the running time of the algorithm takes twice as long to halt if the input is raised to the power of 2. if 12 is the solution and it has 2 digits then what is O(2) supposed to mean?