Simple math question

[billgoldberg]

I'm following an online course to learning "ruby" and there are some examples I'm trying out now.

One is "how many seconds old are you".

I'm almost 22 and I used this for it

((((((365*24) * 8 ) + ((366*24)*2)) * 60) * 2) + (((((365*24) * 8 ) + ((366*24)*2)) * 60) / 5)) *60

The outcome being

rw@legend:~$ ruby /home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb

694172160

Is this correct?

(note that this is only being done using the "puts" prefix, I'm still in the very beginning of the tutorial)

The second "harder one" asked how old you are when you are 1011 million seconds old.

I used this

((1011000000/360)/60)/365

than adds to "128".

Also correct?

[squaregoldfish]

Use Google's conversion tool. Just search for:


22 years in seconds

And you'll have your answer.

Steve.

[kirsis]

1) Not sure how you came up with this formula but it seems you've tried accounting for the leap years too.

Assuming you're exactly 22 and 5 leap years in the 22 year period, what about

(5*366 + 17*365) days = 1830 + 6205 = 8035 days

8035 days * 24 =>
192840 hours * 3600 =>
694224000

Google claims 694 252 371 seconds (http://www.google.lv/search?q=22+years+in+seconds&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a)

I wonder how google gets its result, which differs from this by ~7h worth of seconds

edit: from wikipedia: An average Gregorian year is 365.2425 days = 52.1775 weeks, 8,765.82 hours = 525,949.2 minutes = 31,556,952 seconds (mean solar, not SI).

Google uses 31556952 secs per year

2) The 360 should be 3600 (60 secs * 60 min) and the 60 should be 24

1011 000 000 secs / 60 =>
16 850 000 min / 60 =>
280833,(3) h / 24 =>
11701,3(8) days / 365 =>
~32,06

(this is not counting leap years)

Google says 32,03

http://www.google.lv/search?hl=lv&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=vP5&q=1011000000+seconds+in+years&btnG=Mekl%C4%93t&meta=

[ssam]

i dont know ruby, but most programming languages let you access the UNIX time stamp (have a look for a date library).

the unix time stamp is in seconds since the start of 1970. there should be functions to easy convert this into a calendar date, and back. This will account for all leap years and leap seconds.

you may consider this cheating from a maths point of view, but you'll learn some other useful stuff. you can compare it to the maths answer.

[jespdj]

No need for difficult calculations. Try this (ssam's idea):

birth = Time.local(1971, 8, 9, 17, 55, 0)
now = Time.now

secs = now.to_i - birth.to_i

puts "You are #{secs} seconds old"

Replace with your own birth date, ofcourse.

[billgoldberg]

No need for difficult calculations. Try this:

birth = Time.local(1971, 8, 9, 17, 55, 0)
now = Time.now

secs = now.to_i - birth.to_i

puts "You are #{secs} seconds old"

Replace with your own birth date, ofcourse.

Thanks, but it's the first program language I'm learning (besides xhtml and css, but that doesn't really count) so I don't know 100% what this does (the first two lines).

I do have a question, when I used this:




puts 'hello what\'s your name?'
name = gets.chomp
puts 'Ok, ' + name + '. How old are you?'
age = gets.chomp
puts 'You\'re name is ' + name + ' and you\'re ' + age
days = age.to_i * 365
puts 'you\'re ' + days + ' days old'




I get this error
rw@legend:~$ ruby /home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb
hello what's your name?
rw
Ok, rw. How old are you?
21
You're name is rw and you're 21
/home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb:7:in `+': can't convert Fixnum into String (TypeError)
from /home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb:7

Why?

Or isn't it possible to use "gets" like that?

[jespdj]

birth = Time.local(1971, 8, 9, 17, 55, 0)
now = Time.now

This creates two Time objects: one set to 09-08-1971, 17:55 (my birth date... :) ) and one to the current date and time. "Time" is a class in Ruby's standard library (you can look up the documentation for it on http://ruby-doc.org/core/ or in a Ruby reference book).

It then calls to_i on both objects, which converts the date and time represented by those objects into a number of seconds since the UNIX epoch (01-01-1970, 12:00 AM). Substract those two numbers, and you have the number of seconds between the two dates.

About your error, try this:


puts 'you\'re ' + days.to_s + ' days old'

You have to explicitly convert days to a string by calling to_s on it. (I don't know exactly why Ruby requires that in this case). You could also write it like this:


puts "you're #{days} days old"

Note: There's also a Programming Talk (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39) forum, this question really belongs there.

[lordhaworth]

I think it is right, although this version isnt very accurate I did a similar thing when i started learning VBA and for DOB of 01/09/1986 I get number of seconds alive as: 693272600 which is to the same order of magnitude as your answer.

You gotta remember that seconds isnt very useful, because it can only be "so" accurate. I dont know what second I was born on and dont incorporate the second of the day in this calculation. This could allow an error of a maximum of just under 2 days worth of seconds i.e. error < (60 * 60 * 48)
error < 172800

but in a 9s.f. value this makes the accuracy pretty stupid. You can only really get as good as days alive.

I do think yours is about right tho

Tom

[sujoy]

Thanks, but it's the first program language I'm learning (besides xhtml and css, but that doesn't really count) so I don't know 100% what this does (the first two lines).

I do have a question, when I used this:




puts 'hello what\'s your name?'
name = gets.chomp
puts 'Ok, ' + name + '. How old are you?'
age = gets.chomp
puts 'You\'re name is ' + name + ' and you\'re ' + age
days = age.to_i * 365
puts 'you\'re ' + days + ' days old'




I get this error
rw@legend:~$ ruby /home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb
hello what's your name?
rw
Ok, rw. How old are you?
21
You're name is rw and you're 21
/home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb:7:in `+': can't convert Fixnum into String (TypeError)
from /home/rw/Documents/rubytest.rb:7

Why?

Or isn't it possible to use "gets" like that?



you need to change this line

puts 'you\'re ' + days + ' days old'
to

puts 'you\'re ' + days.to_s + ' days old'

because days is a number as was indicated in the error (Fixnum) and hence you cannot apply string concatenation on it.

[billgoldberg]

you need to change this line

puts 'you\'re ' + days + ' days old'
to

puts 'you\'re ' + days.to_s + ' days old'

because days is a number as was indicated in the error (Fixnum) and hence you cannot apply string concatenation on it.


It makes sense that you can't add a number to a string.

[cpetercarter]

Trouble is, once you've figured all this out, you're older!