OpenEuphoria

Re: Puzzle

• Posted by Patrick Barnes <mrtrick at gmail.com> Aug 10, 2004
• 386 views

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:46:40 -0700, Mike Nelson
<michaelanelson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> For a nX-floor building:
> 
> The balls cost $Y each, your tester makes $Z/hr. The tester has exclusive
> use of an elevevator.
> 
> Clocking in and getting on the elevator on the ground floor taks 5 minutes,
> getting off and clocking out takes 5 minutes. Getting off on a floor, making
> a drop and getting back on takes 5 minutes. The elevaltor moves at 5 seconds
> per floor.
> 
> Ingoring other costs (energy to operate elevator, possible overtime, etc.)
> how many balls show be used for the test? (The balls are small enough that
> the tester can carry the whole supply without difficulty.)
> 
Interesting...

Unless Y is much much more than Z, it would be cheaper just to buy
enough balls to do a pure binary search, because it takes a long time
to retrieve a ball if it doesn't break. Sounds like a rather curly
problem.
-- 
MrTrick