Re: [spoon-discuss] No, I haven't really forgotten...

["Orc In A Spacesuit" <orcinaspacesuit@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

BvS said:
> Dave said:
> > Someone made a guess in the Number Game a while back -- Orc, maybe?

Yes, it was me.

> > I still can't figure out how to respond. No, really, I'm not sure what 
> > thehell a 'distance in five-dimensional space' or whatever that rule asks 
> > for, is.
> >
> > Someone's gonna have to explain it to me in terms a five-year-old can
> > understand.
>
> -The distance between two points on a plane is equal to the square root of 
> the sum of the squares of delta x and delta y. Pythagorean theorem, for 
> those of you going "what the...?".
>
> So, the distance in 5-d space is, through some extrapolation of the 
> Pythagoream theorem, distance^2 = (delta v)^2 + (delta w)^2 + (delta x)^2 + 
> (delta y)^2 + (delta z)^2, where v, w, x, y, and z are the five numbers, 
> and delta (letter) is the real number minus the guess.

I checked the math, and yes, that's correct.  I don't know any 5-year old 
who understands deltas, so here's another explaination that's a bit more 
drawn out:

Let's call the secret Dave's Numbers (A, B, C, D, E)
Let's call the player picked numbers (F, G, H, I, J)

Now, to find the individual distances, we do the following:
A-F=K
B-G=L
C-H=M
D-I=N
E-J=0

Then you make all the negative results positive.  So if K=-3, we set K to 3. 
 If L=2, we leave it alone.  This is the individual distances, or 'Deltas'.

Now you add it all up: K+L+M+N+O.  Then you take the square root of all 
that.  And that's the distance in a 5-dimensional space.

If you want, I could write up a little program that takes care of it all.

Orc in a Spacesuit

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