This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science
related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should
explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments
should further the discussion of math and science.
When posting on Brilliant:
Use the emojis to react to an explanation, whether you're congratulating a job well done , or just really confused .
Ask specific questions about the challenge or the steps in somebody's explanation. Well-posed questions can add a lot to the discussion, but posting "I don't understand!" doesn't help anyone.
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Stay on topic — we're all here to learn more about math and science, not to hear about your favorite get-rich-quick scheme or current world events.
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print "hello world"
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# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.
print "hello world"
Math
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Remember to wrap math in \( ... \) or \[ ... \] to ensure proper formatting.
2 \times 3
2×3
2^{34}
234
a_{i-1}
ai−1
\frac{2}{3}
32
\sqrt{2}
2
\sum_{i=1}^3
∑i=13
\sin \theta
sinθ
\boxed{123}
123
Comments
Patrick,
In fact we do care an immense amount about what you think of our problems, and are bemused that you feel we have given up. We would be grateful for any constructive criticism you have of the types/genre's of problems we offer. As has been pointed out in this thread, computer science is a new topic for us. Everything about the problem set from the difficulty calibration, to the types of problems is a weekly experiment that informs the evolution of what we offer in future weeks. Our math and physics sections have months of experimentation behind them, the Computer Science section, only a few weeks.
If you have suggestions of what types of problems you would like to see we would be happy to hear them.
Is your criticism of that particular problem that it is too easy to put into wolfram alpha? Or do you feel that even writing your own code, the problem is not interesting to you? We would care a lot about the latter criticism.
The computer science module isn't even computer science. It's just asking people to write some basic code to bash out numbers. There's no algorithms involved, no need for efficiency.
When one of the problems is this:
Find the first 3 digits after the decimal point of the given integral:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+of+cos%28x%29%5E100+from+0+to+pi%2F4
You've got a point, but you are definitely going about it the wrong way. Your tone is very harsh, and there is no need for that. Think about this: 1) Computer Science is a very new area to brilliant. 2) There is one person doing that section, so it's not the entire staff. 3) Brilliant has made leaps and bounds in the past few weeks. This is only one instance of incompetence. 4) Brilliant is FREE. I apologize if a free service isn't the best! 5) If you haven't noticed, there is a new competition involving computer programming. It didn't look like that volume of work took a few hours to think and write up.
Clearly Brilliant isn't the site for your experienced programming skills. But it's a great site otherwise. So please think twice before cursing the entire brilliant staff.
You know what isn't computer science? Letting WolframAlpha solve the problem for you. That's knowing how to use the internet. You might want to practice with that some more by the way, as you put the body of your post in a comment.
Hey,I am not so expert ...but still I have solved various project euler problems....Please don't scare anybody with that special tag...I am not supporting anybody else...don't misunderstand...
@Sayan Chaudhuri
–
You certainly don't have to be an expert in order to solve some project euler problems, but solving more than 25% of them requires some skill.
I have to agree that the computer science problems can be better.
Many of the problems I have seen so far are well-known problems that can be searched in Wikipedia, and if it's not, usually it can be solved using simple loops. (I only got to level 5 this week, so I haven't seen what level 5 looks like)
Easy Math Editor
This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.
When posting on Brilliant:
*italics*or_italics_**bold**or__bold__paragraph 1
paragraph 2
[example link](https://brilliant.org)> This is a quote# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"\(...\)or\[...\]to ensure proper formatting.2 \times 32^{34}a_{i-1}\frac{2}{3}\sqrt{2}\sum_{i=1}^3\sin \theta\boxed{123}Comments
Patrick,
In fact we do care an immense amount about what you think of our problems, and are bemused that you feel we have given up. We would be grateful for any constructive criticism you have of the types/genre's of problems we offer. As has been pointed out in this thread, computer science is a new topic for us. Everything about the problem set from the difficulty calibration, to the types of problems is a weekly experiment that informs the evolution of what we offer in future weeks. Our math and physics sections have months of experimentation behind them, the Computer Science section, only a few weeks.
If you have suggestions of what types of problems you would like to see we would be happy to hear them.
Is your criticism of that particular problem that it is too easy to put into wolfram alpha? Or do you feel that even writing your own code, the problem is not interesting to you? We would care a lot about the latter criticism.
The computer science module isn't even computer science. It's just asking people to write some basic code to bash out numbers. There's no algorithms involved, no need for efficiency.
When one of the problems is this:
Find the first 3 digits after the decimal point of the given integral: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+of+cos%28x%29%5E100+from+0+to+pi%2F4
You know that the staff just doesn't care.
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You've got a point, but you are definitely going about it the wrong way. Your tone is very harsh, and there is no need for that. Think about this: 1) Computer Science is a very new area to brilliant. 2) There is one person doing that section, so it's not the entire staff. 3) Brilliant has made leaps and bounds in the past few weeks. This is only one instance of incompetence. 4) Brilliant is FREE. I apologize if a free service isn't the best! 5) If you haven't noticed, there is a new competition involving computer programming. It didn't look like that volume of work took a few hours to think and write up.
Clearly Brilliant isn't the site for your experienced programming skills. But it's a great site otherwise. So please think twice before cursing the entire brilliant staff.
You know what isn't computer science? Letting WolframAlpha solve the problem for you. That's knowing how to use the internet. You might want to practice with that some more by the way, as you put the body of your post in a comment.
I wonder why anyone would care about you.
If you're so smart, why don't you try Project Euler? You probably wouldn't be able to solve a quarter of the problems.
Until then, try gaining a couple of levels in everything. You're not even at level 5 in comp sci and you're criticizing Brilliant? Pathetic.
Log in to reply
Hey,I am not so expert ...but still I have solved various project euler problems....Please don't scare anybody with that special tag...I am not supporting anybody else...don't misunderstand...
Log in to reply
You certainly don't have to be an expert in order to solve some project euler problems, but solving more than 25% of them requires some skill.
I have to agree that the computer science problems can be better. Many of the problems I have seen so far are well-known problems that can be searched in Wikipedia, and if it's not, usually it can be solved using simple loops. (I only got to level 5 this week, so I haven't seen what level 5 looks like)