10402 - Triangle Covering

[Zaheed]

[Zaheed]

[Russell John]

Well done buddy, keep it up!

Cheers!

[Larry]

What's the point of using a dummy account?

[Cletus]

Code: Select all

It is hard to believe that postings like these are real. Are you a
stand-up comedian trying out new material?

What do you gain by typing "da" instead of "the"? Maybe it saves you
a tiny fraction of a second in typing, but it really slows down reading
and (attempted) comprehension. What the hell does "ne" mean in
"do u really need 2 have ne such opinion"? Is literacy something to be
ashamed of?

You say that only the problem setter has the right to make the final 
decision, and "if he confirms that the problem or my solution is 
incorrect i will take it as wrong straightaway", AFTER he has said that
he got it wrong. What's the idea with that?

And then this: "just make the calculations assuming that we'll get 
da largest triangle when the squares r placed as shown in the prob's
figure... isn't dat wat we r supposed 2 do?": No, dat isn't wat we r
supposed 2 do. We are supposed to solve the problem, not do the
impossible. It is not possible to make the construction that the figure
purports to show. You got one answer by ignoring part of the problem
statement. We could equally well pick on other parts of the problem
sttement to ignore, and come up with other answers. As Ivan said,
you were lucky to make the same mistake as the problem setter made.

And this: "any problemsetter will be proud of a problem diz interesting
& hard 2 solve... diz small error can't overshadow his credit..."
The problem setter didn't make this problem up! He got it straight out
of someone else's published paper, and got it wrong. Where is the
credit in that???? (no special insult intended to setter, but it had to be
said). This is in fact an incredibly simple problem that could be solved
by anyone with a very basic knowledge of trigonometry and programming,
if only the input were correct.

And this: "whereas some ppl simply kept on saying dat da problemsetter
is plain wrong..bla bla without ever pointing out wat is so wrong with diz
problem in their eyes". If you had bothered to read the other postings,
you would have seen EXACT and COMPLETE specifications of what is
wrong with the problem, and you wouldn't have had to repeat it in your
own inimitable style in your last posting. "Moved up and down horizontally"
indeed.

If you're only interested in duplicating the erroneous results produced
by someone else, and admit yourself that the problem is wrong but
insist it doesn't matter, and ask the setter not to fix it, you might as
well get a job with microsoft.

P.S. Can anyone else see his picture?

[shahriar_manzoor]

Somewhat impolite comments deleted. I am sorry because I failed to control my emotions.

[Zaheed]

come'n guys, this is getting really sick... not the ideal place for me... so i better be outta here... after all, at the end of the day what you can accomplish is what you have & not what you keep on shouting over... so on my part its absolutely worthless to write anything in this place... & thats also because of some people who won't even let you go if you don't follow grammer... to me thats simply ridiculous... after all, programming is our language here & english that is understandable to some extent shouldn't be commented about... anyways... i withdraw what ever i wrote here & i don't lose anything by doing so... cause i've done what i was supposed to do & i'm happy about it... i don't ask for anything more...

Sabur Zaheed

[mhacm]

Cut

[Cletus]

[code]
Now now now!

I didn't say that Shahriar Manzoor had resorted to plagiarism.

I will say clearly and unambiguously that he did NOT.

It is quite normal and expected for problem setters to take interesting
material from all sorts of sources and make problems out of them. It
is not normal to give credit to the real discoverer because that would
tell everyone where to look for the solution. And in fact, Shahriar Manzoor
did give credit to the discoverer of the problem, the names appear
at the bottom of the problem statement.

I was disagreeing with the previous writer, and I quoted what he said,
so there really shouldn't have been any possibility of not realising that.

Zhaeed had written "any problemsetter will be proud of a problem diz
interesting & hard 2 solve... diz small error can't overshadow his
credit...", and I quoted exactly that before pointing out that the problem
setter did not invent this problem but got it from another published
paper (and got it wrong), so there is no great credit that can't be
overshadowed by a "small" error. Dr. Friedman's web site, cited by
Manzoor in his last posting is the place to see it.

And Zaheed, the point of posting on a board is to communicate. If you
insist on impersonating Ali G. and writing "diz" and "da" and "ne", you
are failing. I still don't know what "ne" was supposed to mean, and I am
not alone. If you don't want to be understood, you can save a lot of time
by just not writing anything. If you do want to be understood, you need
to use a common language.

And finally, I will not "shut my mouth" as Shahriar Mazoor asked. You
did exactly what we said: put up an incorrect problem, and did nothing
to correct it. If you thought I was accusing you of plagiarism, I can
understand your anger, but you really should read postings properly.
Many readers will be aware that this is not the first time that a lot of
people have wasted a lot of time because one of your problems was
incorrect. You can not expect to be free of criticism.
[/code]

[shahriar_manzoor]

I am sorry that this problem has remained unfixed for such a long time. Don't try to solve it. I will try to remove it ASAP. I am also sorry for the unpleasant situations that has occured regarding this problem.

[Joseph Kurniawan]

What's wrong with the prob now, Mister? As I just saw, there are already 239 success submissions for this prob. Not to mention there is a post in Volume CIV written by Zaheed claiming that there's nothing wrong with the prob. Could you please explain to me the problem??
Thnx!!

[shahriar_manzoor]

Triangle Covering 239 ( 0.8 %)

I think you have misunderstood the statistics. The statistics above means there are total 239 submissions and only 0.8 % are accepted. So only two submissions are accepted.

I will have to set a new problem to replace it so the replacement is taking time.

The quote in your signature is nice .

[Joseph Kurniawan]

Yes, that's what I meant. Silly me
So, what's the problem with this one? any bugs or something??
If so, then that would mean the 2 success submissions were invalid??
Thnx!!

Btw, thanx for the compliment for my signature!!

[Andrew Stankevich]

There is already topic on this problem, but it seems full of flame...

Well, actually I have accidently solved the problem and I must note that there must be the mistake in the judges' solution.

Everybody thinks that the problem is in T4 because the picture has a small ambiguity in "three coincident lines" on the bottom of the triangle. However, the constant for T4 _can_ be evaluated from the picture, as far as I understand, it is 4 / sqrt(3). In fact, it does not matter which of the three suspicious points are actually points of intersection of three lines!

The problem is in T6!!!

You can get the problem accepted yourself if you add 0.00030901845957294 to your CORRECT value of T6...

The problem is that in the equation judges have mistakenly written "sin" instead of "tan" in one place, just as I did accidently.

Hope, this will be fixed.

(There is another possibility, however. It is that three squares that contain triangle vertices do not share a part of the edge with the triangle, thus leading to some other optimization equation. However looks very unprobable that wrong equation for the case we see on the picture and the correct solution could be thesame).

[shahriar_manzoor]

I have got some other correct solutions also. Please send your one to me at shahriar@neksus.com

-Shahriar