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#1 Re: Help Me ! » Total Number Of Combinations » 2011-05-05 12:15:13
Thanks for all your help. This exam has to be calculated 100% by hand and we have 5 hours to complete the single question. There's also a bonus question that will be based on the initial question.
I'll let you know how things go tomorrow! I'm still hoping he doesn't pick this question as it has a lot of writing to it compared to the others.
#2 Re: Help Me ! » Total Number Of Combinations » 2011-05-02 10:46:31
My exam is on Friday, was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this? I'm still struggling, other than figuring out the puzzles 1 by 1, I can't think of how to calculate this. Thanks again for any help 
#3 Re: Help Me ! » Total Number Of Combinations » 2011-04-29 04:22:31
yes so basically there is only 1 way to get a 16, 16 ways to get a 15, etc. I believe there's 256 ways to get a 14. Once you get to 13 down to 8 it gets a lot more tricky because if you have 3 yellows and a green in a row or column then that's a 13 but when you change that entire row the 3 yellows will turn green and the green will turn red so the best score would be a 14 so that's where I'm having my problems.
#4 Re: Help Me ! » Total Number Of Combinations » 2011-04-28 22:23:36
sorry, I forgot about that, that tool lets you do the dots 1 at a time, but the small dots around the left and top side are what are used to change an entire row or column at one time.
#5 Help Me ! » Total Number Of Combinations » 2011-04-28 16:46:27
- Robar
- Replies: 23
I'm hoping this is the right area to post this. I've got a final exam coming up shortly and our teacher gave us 5 questions for practice. One of these questions will be the only question on my math exam and I have a feeling that since this one question is the only one I can't figure out that it will be the one on the exam. This exam can cover any topics and can require any equations from any of the 4 years worth of math we took so that's partly what makes this one hard for me to figure out. Any help would be great.
Our teacher provided us with this tool so we knew how the puzzle could be solved and it makes the question make more sense. The tool is located at http://www.miketyndall.com/hobowars/unisolver/ and is apparently part of some online game which is where he got the idea for this question. The only real difference between the question he gave us and this tool is that the tool uses 3 colours with values linked to them where as the question he gave us just uses the values.
After looking at the puzzle you will notice that the puzzle is a 4x4 grid with each grid piece having a value of 'Red' for a -1, 'Yellow' for a 0 or 'Green' for a 1. The idea is to get the highest score possible every time the puzzle is randomly designed. We've been given the following information:
1) The lowest score after solving is 8
2) The highest score after solving is 16
The Question:
a) How many solved puzzle combinations have a final score of 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15?
b) How many total combinations are there?
Basically to answer part b is to just add up the answers from part a but to include a score of 8 and the single score of 16 to the total but I think that he was hoping people would forget to add in the totals for the ones he didn't ask for in part a.
I'm not looking for the answer but rather how to figure out the answer. I'm not sure how to figure out how many combinations of a final score of 8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16 there are but I'm sure there's got to be some kind of an equation but I can't figure it out for the life of me.
Once again thanks for those willing to try to help me out
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