$10K for solving a math equation | Hacker News Reader

$10K for solving a math equation

joshjames.com

17 pointsparaschopra35 comments

Four equations, five unknowns, all linear. This isn't particularly difficult, just tedious.

Because there are more unknowns than equations, your solution should itself be an equation expressing one of the unknowns as a linear function of the other four -- omega = a * beta + b * gamma + c * phi + d * mu, where a, b, c, and d are found by chugging away using your favorite linear solution technique (Gaussian elimination, perhaps.)

I leave the actual solution as an exercise for the reader ;)

The only tedious part is typing it out into a linear solver like this one:

http://wims.unice.fr/wims/en_tool~linear~linsolver.en.html

Solution: http://wims.unice.fr/wims/wims.cgi?session=QW1E82D03B.1&...

Getting the numbers appears to be the easy part in figuring out the new company name.

Actually as you can see from the answer below. Omega can actually be eliminated from every equation and there are thus 4 variables, 4 equations -> solvable

Even after doing all that the prize money is for getting the company name right.

The disclaimer at the bottom suggests to me that perhaps there is a second part of the puzzle, which occurs after finding the "answer key" and signing an NDA. So I'm pretty sure no one will pick up $10K for solving a linear system.

The competition is apparently suspended. I don't understand how part of the solution could "become public" unless someone at his company leaked the info.

I guess you combine the four numbers Mu = 231, Phi = 158, Delta = 553, Beta = 68 to get a phone number, which you call to get the next clue. Though which order is anyone's guess. Useless if you live outside the US too.

I don't think this was a well thought out puzzle.

Is there an online OCR that can parse that? I suppose then one could feed it to Wolfram Alpha? I tried Google Docs, but it didn't convert anything at all.

4(9μ + 16φ + 6Ω - 200) + 3Ω - 1 + 2(2Δ - μ) + 9(9β - 5Δ - 3Ω ) = 0

10(4β - 4Δ + 3Ω ) - Δ + μ + β - 3 - 8Ω + 11(5μ - 2Ω + 4φ) = 0

9(2Ω - 4Δ + 6φ) - 15Ω - 3(Ω + 1 - Δ) + 5(7μ + 5β - 13) = 0

10(2Ω - 600 + 5φ + 6β) + 3(β - μ) + φ + μ - 4(6Δ - 8μ + 5Ω ) = 0

Reduce it enough, and Wolfram Alpha generates a visual representation of a plane. But this is also a puzzle - I think the key isn't getting an equation out of it, it is figuring out where they want us to apply said equation.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=81+b-41+w%2B64+x%2B34+z...

β = 68, Δ = 553, φ = 158, μ = 231

Back of a piece of paper calculation and a hand calculator:

beta = 131376/19147

gamma = - 485151/95735

phi = 271932/95735

mu = 617333/95735

omega = anything, it's zero everywhere (?)

I found different answer: beta = -134369656/464781 = -289.10316041318384 gamma or delta = 25151792561/19056021 = 1319.8869040394109 phi = 155732362/154927 = 1005.1983321177071 mu = 180458411/464781 = 388.2654648103085

I don't have courage to verify the solution for this abomination of numbers.

I don't think you can solve for 5 variables with only 4 equations. Your answer would have to be a relation of variables to each other (beta = n gamma) instead of a number.

He did not solve for 5 variables, he solved 4 and the last one can be anything.

It doesn't have to be in that relation. Example, 2 variable, 1 equation. x + y - y = 0.

Here x must be 0.

That probably means the company name is 'omega' or something like 'omega unlimited'.

That leads to my guess: UnnecessaryComplexity.com

That puzzle does not inspire me with the notion that this new company is psychologically oriented toward making clean understanding out of complicated data.

Is this part of the application process?! There is no easy to find contact information on how to submit the answer key. Obviously solving this is the easy part, but who would we contact?

If they wrote how long that has been live and if anyone submit the correct answer, then I would try. But not worth my time, for all i know they already chose their friend.

Mu = 231, Phi = 158, Delta = 553, Beta = 68, Omega=0

231 + 158 + 553 + 68 = 1010

Of course that leaves the infinite omega. 1010 appears to be base 2. So, "10 to infinity" maybe? Maybe? Maybe not. Alright, my 2 minutes of thinking about this are up!

Well, none of the 24 combinations of those seems to give a valid IP address. Probably they screwed up. Of course a standard IP address wouldn't have values above 255 anyhow.

I like the thought, but what makes you think the numbers HAVE to be an IP?

Perhaps delta is the port. How do you scan for validity of an IP address?

You can just type the IP address into your browser.

But that is unlikely to be it. If the puzzle maker has even half a brain, those four numbers are only some part of the puzzle. If you look at the equations, they are way more complex than they need to be to give those four numbers. There must be additional data encoded there somehow. Of course if the puzzle maker is clever, there'll also be a clue there somewhere.

Of course these things tend to be done by marketing people who have no idea how to set puzzles. So the solution will probably end up being something really silly. And someone will somehow divine the answer, possibly because they were told ahead of time how to solve the puzzle.

It's rarely worth solving problems like these.

I've stared at this thing for 30 minutes trying to extract text from it. There is probably some trick meant to be clever that will strike people as obnoxious once they hear it.

But wouldn't the browser only check for port 80?

Agreed that it's probably not the solution, just wondering.

All right. Except Omega is not = 0. Omega can be anything...

Yeah good point, I guess I jumped from the variable not being there to the variable being nothing itself.

The careers link jumps to corda.com. Does this mean the company name has already been solved?

Corda is an old company with an old enterprisey XML product.

Josh James bought Corda http://allthingsd.com/20110427/exclusive-whats-former-omnitu...

Looks like he's trying to remake Corda into something useful.

Of note, both Omniture and Corda are based in Utah. When he went shopping, he didn't look far.

It's interesting that he doesn't have any non-compete agreements in place stopping him from competing with the $1.8B analytics company he just sold and resigned from.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50864867-76/adobe-james-co...

Where are we supposed to submit our "answers" to? I didn't see any contact info on the site.

I'm guessing the name of the company is "Relatively Prime"

Just sayin'

i give up http://math.bd.psu.edu/~jpp4/finitemath/4x4solver.html

the answer is damdollar

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