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My son came home with a homework assignment today that I think is a bit tough. Here it is If you assign the letters of the alphabet numeric values with 1 == a and 26 == z, find a word starting with each letter that sums to exactly 100. Or at least (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Look for patterns or workarounds. Whenever something comes along that, like this, appears way too hard to be reasonable, I just assume it's a trick question. Which way the smoke blows depends on where the survivors were buried.(1) (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) It certainly takes a lot of trial and error to come up with a word which sums to 100 exactly. So to find one word at 100 starting with each letter from the alphabet could easily take a few days if you're not using any computer tools. The (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Hm. Figuring the average letter is worth 13.5 points, this means that most words are going to be in the 7-8 letter range. That's probably reasonable for a third grader. I suppose it's a way to get in a heck of a lot of boring arithmetic (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) I couldn't help it... and it's my first attempt at a one liner :) perl -ne 'BEGIN{for('a'..'z')...f$t==100;' /usr/dict/linux.words comes out with 498 words out of 45402 in the file... pretty fast too :) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Neither could I. This one's on sloaris, and I apologize for my mediocre coding style. It's still much more readable than that perl mess ever hoped to be, but probably took me longer. :) #include <stdio.h> int fd; FILE *fi; char buf[20]; int (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) not going into a holy war, it's a mess cause I Wanted it to be :) the original form was 10 lines, and quite readable :) (...) keyboards kissers - not sure if 'kissers' is a word, but I think 'keyboards' should qualify... :) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) This must be proof that linux is better than solaris. There's 20,000 more words in /usr/dict/words on my dedrat 6.x box, and 242 more of them score 100 points. The religous wars can end now. :) Still no x or z. Oddly enough, my dedrat 7.0 box (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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My son had a similiar assignment (2nd or third grade - he's in fourth now), but it wasn't *exactly* 100. I don't remember the exact parameters of the assignment, but it wasn't something frustratingly difficult - finding exact 100 pt. words is going (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Just getting *over* 100 is quite easy, you just need words that have a number of late alpahabet letters. Since R, S, and T are common letters and are late in the alphabet you are all set. Like I said, ironically, "alphabet" itself is 99... so (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) zebrahides at 97 is the closest I came for a Z (...) Well someone mail me the words and I'll have Nik turn them all in along with Dan's perl 1 liner and no other comment.... :-) ++Lar (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Done. -JDF (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) I hope you will not be too tough on her. She probably found the assignment and thought it sounded good and assigned it without taking the time to try it out herself (happens more at this time of year when teachers are getting swamped with (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Finally remembered the assignment: get as close as you can to 100 without going over. Only one word, but it had to at least be 90, so most kids searched around a bit until they got one close, but it didn't drag on forever. Everyone compared (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Part of the problem was bad communication (by Nik to us). This was an enrichment assignment, not a mandatory one. And only some of the kids got it, it wasn't intended to actually be solved... (I know this now because Jo called me, it's been (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) Not sure this is a good assumption. The letters aren't evenly distributed -- for example, E is way more common than Z. The median letter is probably somewhere around K -- and you only need to get up to 'E' to be past the 1/4 mark. (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) It was indeed a little off. I'd worked out 7.4 letters per word based on an even-ish distribution; working on the list from the linux /usr/dict/words shows an average of 8.4 letters per word (after subtracting out the ^Js) for words in nature. (...) (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) /usr/dict/words on many linux distributions is terrible. Here's an interesting test: grep herbivore /usr/dict/words grep omnivore /usr/dict/words grep carnivore /usr/dict/words (23 years ago, 12-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) On most anything, actually. It's really not meant to be a dictionary, even though the directory looks like it. Sometimes a random word comes in handy, though. (...) None of them are found in the sloaris /usr/dict/words. :) Besides, in this age (...) (23 years ago, 13-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Reasonable assignment for a third grader?
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(...) The amusing thing on Red Hat Linux is that herbivore and omnivore are there, as are carnivorous and carnivorously, but not carnivorous. (23 years ago, 14-Apr-01, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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