[Tutor] Programming Style

[Gonçalo Rodrigues]

Em Wed, 26 May 2004 14:29:38 +0800, "William Rance"
<rantek at pacific.net.sg> atirou este peixe aos pinguins:

>A Pure Mathematician(PM) and an Applied Mathematician(AM) were put in
>separate rooms and located 20ft from an Apple.They were informed that to
>reach the apple they had to jump 10ft, followed by another jump of half
>thedistance (5ft) followed by subsequent jumps each of which would be half
>the
>distance of preceding jump.
>The PM quickly calculated that no matter how may jumps he made he could
>never land at the apple, consequently he did not attempt the jumps.
>The AM however immediately started jumping, as he calculated that after 5
>to6 jumps he would land close enough to grab the apple.
>

Actually you're wrong on the motivations: The PM knows a geometric
series when he sees one, so he proved on paper that after an infinite
amount jumps (and an infinite amount of time) he would have jumped a
distance of *exactly*

10*(1/(1-1/2)) = 20

20ft that is, which means he would land *exactly* on top of the apple.
Being satisfied with this result (which he reached after a few
seconds) he delivered a paper (on LaTeX) to the examiners, posted a
copy to the arxiv, and sent another one to the Board of Advances in
Mathematics, and then went on to do more interesting things than be a
guinea pig to *mutter obscenities against the examiners*. By God! he
didn't even liked apples!

With my best regards,
G. Rodrigues

P.S: He thought about slicing off the arms of the AM, but he wouldn't
be so cruel and destroy the pleasure of such simpleton minds, now
would he ;-)