bit of mathz problem?
- Thread starter smogsy
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 30 Sep 2005
- Posts
- 16,808
BODMAS
Caporegime
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
- Posts
- 34,562
- Location
- Warwickshire
Maths.
There is a very good argument against it being "maths" over "math".
Usually I'm on the side of anything against Americanisation of words. however the argument is this.
You should never pluralise a shortened word.
Maths is short for mathematics, the word can be shorted to math by you should not then add an "s" to the end.
Its not a straight line though. He will zig zag from house to house. Its likely to be multiple times larger.
yes, but does he only visit children? so not every house?
Caporegime
- Joined
- 13 May 2003
- Posts
- 34,562
- Location
- Warwickshire
Well I never knew that. Thanks!
You'd have to know the location of every house visited (good children only obviously), and then understand the heuristic he follows for route planning. Traveling Salesman? Or does Santa apply his own graph traversal algorithm?
If you then model the graph of houses, and the path taken, the edge lengths will provide the total distance traveled.
The time he has to complete the task is interesting. Does he only work during sleeping hours? Bit akward if he pops down the chimney during lunch on Christmas eve. I would presume he would follow a 'follow the moon' approach, ensuring he starts at UTC-12, and then works progressively West. We'd have to factor in the distance from the North Pole, to the first house, and so on.
Poo breaks?
If you then model the graph of houses, and the path taken, the edge lengths will provide the total distance traveled.
The time he has to complete the task is interesting. Does he only work during sleeping hours? Bit akward if he pops down the chimney during lunch on Christmas eve. I would presume he would follow a 'follow the moon' approach, ensuring he starts at UTC-12, and then works progressively West. We'd have to factor in the distance from the North Pole, to the first house, and so on.
Poo breaks?
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 3 Oct 2009
- Posts
- 19,893
- Location
- Wales
There are roughly 2 billion children worldwide. However, assuming Santa doesn't visit the children of Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, atheist and so on parents, that leaves the 35 per cent or thereabouts whose parents consider themselves Christian. That's still an impressive 700,000,000 children in a night. Assuming three children per household, that's 233,000,000 stops for Santa and his sleigh.
If we assume that the 233,000,000 good Christian households are distributed evenly around the world , and the planet's surface area is 510,000,000km (and for the sake of simple calculations we are going to treat the Earth as a square map, rather than a globe), then each stop between households will be around 1.47km (0.91 miles) apart. Santa will therefore have to travel a total of 342,510,000km (212,030,000 miles).
If he's clever about it, and travels from east to west with the Sun, maximising his available night-time, Santa has about 32 hours to work with (assuming children sleep for eight hours, he has 24 hours plus those eight to finish). Travelling 342,510,000km in 32 hours equates to a speed of 10,703,437.5km/hr (6,650,807.72mph), or a little under 1,800 miles per second, assuming he takes no time actually to deliver the presents or stop for any comfort breaks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/6859529/Father-Christmass-Christmas-Eve-in-figures.html
If we assume that the 233,000,000 good Christian households are distributed evenly around the world , and the planet's surface area is 510,000,000km (and for the sake of simple calculations we are going to treat the Earth as a square map, rather than a globe), then each stop between households will be around 1.47km (0.91 miles) apart. Santa will therefore have to travel a total of 342,510,000km (212,030,000 miles).
If he's clever about it, and travels from east to west with the Sun, maximising his available night-time, Santa has about 32 hours to work with (assuming children sleep for eight hours, he has 24 hours plus those eight to finish). Travelling 342,510,000km in 32 hours equates to a speed of 10,703,437.5km/hr (6,650,807.72mph), or a little under 1,800 miles per second, assuming he takes no time actually to deliver the presents or stop for any comfort breaks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/6859529/Father-Christmass-Christmas-Eve-in-figures.html
Reindeer are magic, so all bets are off. Presumably if they can produce enough energy, time dilation may play a part in this equation.
His velocity will be relative to the observer
Why?
Probably because it's a load of rubbish. Abbreviations of plural words should also be plural, e.g. the abbreviation of telephones would be phones, not phone.
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 May 2005
- Posts
- 2,964
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
This is a massive application of the travelling salesman problem - which if you can work out the optimal solution without running into the heat-death of the universe - you would be a very rich man.
- Joined
- 27 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 107,330
- Location
- In bed with your sister
That's what I was thinking. I was just trying to come up with an example but was struggling due to a particularly nasty hangover/allergy combo
Phones will do just nicely.