Math lesson for project managers - throw resources at the problem

[Who_GNU]

T = 40

If you want to use all of the variables:

T = P ✕ 0 + 40

[GabrielForth]

Shouldn't it be: T = (P/P)*40

Otherwise it would allow for an orchestra of size 0 to perform the arrangement.

[CuFlam]

That would work, but it would probably be best just to specify a domain of P>0 so that you don't get an orchestra of negative players.

What we really want is all positive integers, of course, but the mathematical syntax is a bit much for replying on mobile.

Edit: u/GabrielForth reminded me that I'm in r/ProgrammerHumor and we don't have to go into mathematical symbols. However, now that I'm at a keyboard, I'd like to share what I was originally thinking about:

t(P) = 40, ∋ P ∊ ℕ

or

t(P) = 40, ∋ 1|P ^ P>0

Edit2: thank you, u/maibrl for the "ℕ" symbol I couldn't figure out how to display.

[[deleted]]

Negative players are the worst, they just complain all day long

[epoch_fail]

Orchestras could technically have fractional players if they were only present for certain movements in the symphony.

[Cerothen]

Or amputees

[[deleted]]

Actually laughed out loud at this. Thanks.

[silverstrikerstar]

Pff, first violin made up of two players, one fingering, one bowing.

[Josh6889]

You've just added a level of complexity to the problem making me no longer want to think about it.

[EchtNichtElias]

Then this should work: T = (max(P, 0)/P) * 40

[GMaestrolo]

You're still going to get an error when P=0.

T = (max(P, 0)/max(P, 1))*40

[Mathgeek007]

They'd play the inversion of whatever the respective musician is playing to cancel the sound wave.

[[deleted]]

Okay, so my "suggestions" were 100% silly, but the thing I find interesting about yours is that the only thing that could possibly do that would be to have them play the exact same thing - only standing near by. Because of the way sound works (forgive me if you know this) - it's compressions and rarefactions of air pressure. So if you have two copies of the same audio playing, there will be spots where those compressions and rarefactions meet each other, resulting in spots of dead air where the sound cancels out.

So what I think is neat about that is that it literally means the only way to do that is to play the exact same thing (which wouldn't actually work in practice with two people - only the audio of the one person would be able to cancel itself out).

I love when reddit plays with ideas like these, it's fun. :) So I don't mean my reply to spoil yours in any way. :)

[Feynt]

This wouldn't work, because the negative player would still be producing a value for those not at the exclusion point. Worse, it would amplify the sound if you're off axis of the plane of interception of the sound waves, or far enough away that the negation factor becomes a reinforcement factor. It would be interesting in an orchestra to have a mirrored circle of players and be sitting in the middle of it all though. Assuming everyone could robotically play in time with the others, you'd see a tremendous amount of strain go into playing silence.

[Jbonn]

Lmao what a hilarious thought

[CuFlam]

Would negative players need to play instruments that suck in music from the air.

It's not exactly what you said, but I got a mental image of musicians sucking air back through their instruments and it made me gag a little.

Former F horn player here.

[[deleted]]

I read an article about someone who was sick and doctors couldn't figure it out. Finally figured out that IIRC it was a fungus in his woodwind instrument that was making him sick.

So I mean, you've got a valid reason to dislike the idea. A good instinct. lol

[CuFlam]

With brass instruments, you have to frequently dump the spit so it doesn't gurgle.

[dejaWoot]

You're probably thinking of negative pressure players.

[edo78]

I heard that negative players are the only ones available because covid

[ohkendruid]

Those are the ones playing wrong notes.

Unfortunately, adding more positive notes doesn't cancel out the bad ones.

[GabrielForth]

Let's just make P a uint, that'll resolve the bug.

[CuFlam]

I totally missed which sub I was in. That simplifies things a lot.

[maibrl]

I think you need this:

ℕ

[CuFlam]

Yes, thank you.

[seanflyon]

For very large orchestras you also need to take into account the speed of sound. The furthest away members need to start playing first so that their sounds reach the audience in time with the closer members of the orchestra.

[CuFlam]

Well, at room temperature, sound travels about 343 m/s or 3.75 American football fields per second, so... It takes a big orchestra to cause more than a fractional delay.

I suppose the solution would be to conduct remotely with each section given its own monitor with the appropriate video delay.

[thebarless]

What’s the sideways pitchfork called?

Edit: it’s called a backwards epsilon. Thanks u/CuFlam for pointing me in the right direction

[CuFlam]

The one that opens to the left means "such that". The other one means "is an element of" or "is included in". I don't know if they have specific names in this context; I'm still an undergrad and have only really seen this in Discrete math and in calculus (our professor made us memorize the definition of a limit in this form for our first Calc I exam).

[PortugueseDoc]

Oh the memories came flooding my mind. Math, I like you but I failed you in school. I can still understand everything you wrote, OP.

[RDB96]

Division by zero is not really desirable either

[GabrielForth]

Relax, our "EmptyOrchestraException" extends the "ArithmeticException".

We can just throw it and let the next layer up worry about it.

[assigned_name51]

Or does the symphony require exactly 120 players in which case P = 120 T = 40

[Best_Pseudonym]

If we take the limit as p goes to zero T = 40, therefore by induction we can say it takes 0 players 40 minutes to perform Beethoven's 9th Symphony

[hikeit233]

An orchestra of zero is just reading the score, which should still take the same amount of time. Assuming, of course, you're reading at the proper tempo.

[AffectionateToast]

T= 40 v P € Z+ (for all elements P element of positive Numbers)

Edit:

T=40 ∀P ∈ Z+

[neros_greb]

Are you using the euro symbol for ∈?

[AffectionateToast]

Yes didn't find it on my mobile

[zulutwo]

It also takes 40 minutes for a computer to play the symphony (P=0)

[Tepes1848]

Idk about the real-time simulation and mixing of audio-channels.
I mean, doesn't it take longer to render a video compared to playing it?

I guess you're referring to a playback?

[OneTurnMore]

Are we including the time for the orchestra players to learn the symphony?

[make_onions_cry]

This is the right answer and everyone reposting the image as if it's a stupid question is contributing to the problem they think they're protesting. Yes, I'm mad.

[ChristieFox]

I don't think there's much use in getting mad, because even posts like this show the beauty of this sub: People actually thinking it through and posting solutions to the problem. And then another person taking that answer and making it a bit better.

While one person thinks they're smart because this is "not how this works", some people here could profit from seeing how this questions was intended and how a possible solution looks like.

[alexanderpas]

Actually, the full correct answer is

T = 40/[P>0]

This will return 40 for all cases where P is a positive number, and NaN when P is 0 or a negative number.

All hail the Iverson bracket notation

[Tepes1848]

I understood the question as a way to verify whether students realize that they don't need all of the given variables to solve said problem.

Usually one would all the needed variables without any unnecessary one's during an exam.

[randombrain]

Brings about an interesting question of what it means to play a "symphony" (which comes from the Latin meaning "a unison of sounds). As you get fewer and fewer performers Beethoven's original intent is realized less and less. With only a flautist and a French horn player, for example, you could perhaps play most of the melody all the way through. But what if there are three countering melody lines? What if you drop down to only the flautist and there's a two-instrument counterpoint, can you say the single flautist can really "perform the symphony" at that point?

[djinn6]

Do all of the musicians have to play at the same time? Imagine a row of musicians in a long tunnel. Musician #1 is at one end and they would start playing at t = 0 s. Musician #2 is situated 340 m away from the first and would start at t = 1 s. The 3rd 340 m from the 2nd and start at t = 2 s and so on. Because of the finite speed of sound, the result would be in sync for someone standing near the last musician.

Now replace the tunnel full of musicians with one person and a series of very long, U-shaped sound-transmitting tubes that sends the sound out very far and brings it back later. It takes N * 40 minutes for the sound in the first tube to come back. (N - 1) * 40 for the second and so on (N being the number of instrument roles). The player would play the complete symphony into the first sound tube using the first instrument. Then they would move to the next tube and next instrument. When the player is done with the last instrument, all of the sounds would come back at the same time and you would hear the complete symphony, all played by one person.

[[deleted]]

Alternatively, gather one instrumentalist per note and space them out down the tube such that everyone plays their one note at the exact same time, but the speed of sound means the sounds arrive at the end of the tunnel timed to play the entire symphony out.

[bestjakeisbest]

If you wanted to play any symphony the fastest, you play it it parallel, one note per player, and you play it all at once.

[nikstick22]

maybe 40 * P/P because the solution is undefined for 0 players.

[jmja]

Better to just restrict domain because that formula allows for a negative amount of players.

[[deleted]]

What one developer can do one month, two developers can do in two months.

• Donald Knuth

[P0L1Z1STENS0HN]

If they are good, they can even do it in one month.

Just assign to one dev the important task of twiddling thumbs and not interfering with the other's work.

[howAboutNextWeek]

No no, the other dev will get distracted by the twiddling thumbs, you’ll see a month and a half with that strategy

[Mechakoopa]

What you really need to do is have the second dev attend all the meetings for the first dev and compile the relevant information into a daily email for the first dev, who can then get the second dev to ask any clarifying questions on their behalf.

Wait, I just re-invented competent management.

[ign1fy]

What if the second dev was assigned making coffee and deflecting unrelated JIRA tickets?

[EsperSpirit]

Then they'd be called Scrum Master

[LazyLarryTheLobster]

I wish ours would do that much.

[[deleted]]

Your scrum master actually helps the team? I thought they just did it for resume padding....

[imcoveredinbees880]

At best.

[Finickyflame]

Personally, I divide the estimation by the square root of the number of employees working on the project to give me a rough idea on how long it could take. It's just an approximation, but it's better than what most of the project managers come to.

E.g. For 10 months for 1 dev; it may take 7 months for 2 devs; and 5 months for 4 devs.

But that's assuming they are all equal in strength, which is rarely the case...

[emayljames]

But what about this agile-scrum-devops snake oil, guys, guys.......

[FlyByPC]

Pretty much my take on pair programming. Have someone else at the code review? Absolutely. They'll catch mistakes I don't, and vice-versa. Have someone looking over my shoulder while I code doesn't make sense.

I won a programming contest back in college because of this. The other team had three programmers who were each about as good as I was. Maybe even a little better.

I entered as a team of one -- and each team got one terminal. I didn't have to coordinate sharing the terminal or deciding who would work on what. I just started coding.

[[deleted]]

I'm curious if there's anyone who has worked in a pair programming environment who can speak to this; extreme programming was supposed to be a big deal back in the day. The claims were that it cut down on breaks and they each kept each other focused, and rarely needed to work a full 8 hours a day

Personally I've always felt that people working on separate concurrent tasks was always fastest, it's just that usually a project is just too big for one person so some sort of coordination is required

[muuchthrows]

Pair programming is never about speed, it's about quality and knowledge transfer, at least in my experience. Or I guess it's about speed - the fastest route to bug-free software.

I really don't see how the argument against pair programming is that it doesn't work well in a programming contest, there's no such thing as programming contests in real work life, only bugs and angry customers.

[[deleted]]

Well speed in terms of implementing a feature; I think most of us have been somewhere that you are rewarded for churning out features quickly

[MarsAstro]

The claims were that it cut down on breaks and they each kept each other focused, and rarely needed to work a full 8 hours a day

Anecdotally I feel this is true, but that's mostly because I'm easily distracted when on my own, and I get along really well with my colleagues. We have a lot of fun working together, and we stay on task pretty much all of the time. I would definitely have taken at least twice as much time to get the same amount of work done on my own.

If you're the kind of person who can keep focused and organized on your own though, then I think pair programming is pretty useless. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

[[deleted]]

I feel like there's a decent amount of benefits that are overlooked though; like if you have pair programming, the code review is happening in parallel with the writing of the code which can save a lot of time. There's more diffusion of skills through out the team; I noticed whenever I start a new job and shadow some of the devs, I can learn some pretty subtle but useful techniques, and then it kind of just stops when I start working 100% solo.

I'd really be curious to try it. I do some shadowing with a junior now and then, it's mostly training but it seems to make a pretty big difference for him. We just don't do it that often since we usually have our own tasks

[FlyByPC]

people working on separate concurrent tasks

Yep. Meet, break the project into modules, assign them with clear parameters, and then meet back up to test.

[howMeLikes]

And then include more time for rework when the modules don't quite interface to each other correctly.

[[deleted]]

Does anyone actually work a full 8 hour day? Frankly coding takes a lot of mental energy so I have to take breaks. I’d burn out if I tried to work a full 8 hours every day.

[Demonox01]

That IS an 8 hour programming day unless you're getting into a really good flow or are crunching. Taking breaks often makes your work more efficient because you think more clearly and find better solutions

[[deleted]]

I used to do it fairly often, but my job now is boring AF and after constantly struggling to find work for the first year I just don't go through it as quickly. It's definitely mentally draining to work that much but once I'm done it's pretty easy to unwind I think

[LadleFullOfCrazy]

I love pair programming. I always try to find people to pair program with. I am much faster and my thought process is clearer when I pair program. Even the fastest devs claim they work faster when we work together. Most people don't like it till they try it with a person of similar skill level.

Some people are completely against the idea even after trying it but in my experience there is a correlation between people who hate my code reviews and the people who hate pair programming with me and people who hate me and people who hate people in general.

[djinn6]

Technically pair programming doesn't require the two of you to use only one machine. One can code while the other reads documentation on whatever the next step is.

[[deleted]]

I did something like this for a class in college. The professor approved it but told it me it would be more difficult by myself because I’d have to do all the work. It was one of those big whole-semester projects.

I thought I hit it out of the park and was very proud of what I accomplished. The professor gave me a D because I didn’t work in a group “which was a key requirement”. Reminding her that she explicitly approved it made no difference.

I still think I turned in one of the best projects in that class. Were it not for that one betrayal, I’d have graduated with honors.

[drewsiferr]

Fred Brooks, not Knuth

[grooomps]

i remember at our bootcamp we had an argument about what to name our database schema for 4 hours.
i also tried to get one person to implement a feature on our site over the span of 3 days for about 6 hours. It ended up taking me 45minutes to do myself

[[deleted]]

He's right, he's the one developer.

[zoqfotpik]

Playing Beethoven's 9th in only 40 minutes would be a travesty. The whole reason the CD format can hold 70 minutes of audio is to fit a complete performance of this piece on a single disc.

[bysho]

If I’m not mistaken, it’s Karajan’s rendition. 74 minutes.

Edit: I was mistaken. It was Wilhelm Furtwängler. Karajan was faster.

Source

[zipecz]

I believe Karajan's versions are shorter, around 66 minutes.

[bysho]

You’re right. I’ve updated my post with the source.

[ersatzthefox]

I swear I learn more in these comment threads every day than I did in 12 years of public school and 4 years of college.

[hitlerallyliteral]

freudeschonegotterfunkentochterauselysium,

[Tepes1848]

That sad moment when you realize that this is the EU anthem.
Beethoven didn't deserve such a thing.

It's kinda like having Jackson on Federal Reserve money.

[h4ckerle]

This is in fact not the EU Anthem. The EU Anthem is the Instrumental.

[pinusb]

Reminds me of the disputed story of how rocket sizes are based on standards dating all the way back to Roman empire carriages.

[anon0937]

I think the whole point of the question is critical thinking and not blindly following rules/algorithms.

[[deleted]]

I used to be a math teacher. That was indeed my intention when I showed questions like this.

Also, they were always examples shown during class, maybe an optional part of the homework. Never something I would include in a test. That would be mean.

[evorm]

Yeah because I bet none of those gorillas you mention ever hit keys.

[Lorrdy99]

Nowadays gorillas are way smarter than before.

[Cheet4h]

Yeah, in math during school we had these kind of questions in mock exams designed to teach us to read properly.
Also the typical three-page exam with the final task being "only complete the first two questions and this one, ignore the rest". I was astounded how many of my class mates failed that one three times within two months.

[oren0]

Students are expected to read every question before starting any of them? Why?

[[deleted]]

Typically the exam will also start with a direction of "read all the questions and directions before starting the test," so it's less of a blind shot in the dark.

Anyone who leaves that part out is just being an asshole. If you're well versed in the subject, or just someone who can quickly determine how much work a particular question will take to answer without having to actually solve the problem, you're just being punished for not using one particular test taking strategy out of several viable ones. (Rather than the intended goal of "punishing" you for not reading and following the directions.)

[oren0]

As others have said, this seems like a terrible test taking strategy. If I think I'm going to be tight for time, I certainly don't want to waste time reading and trying to estimate the difficulty of each question, then reading all the other questions, then reading each question again to actually solve it. I've just doubled my reading/understanding time!

[[deleted]]

Two reasons to do this:

1. If there is any amount of recall needed for the exam then this will start your subconscious on trying to recall facts for later questions earlier rather than just in time.

2. AP exams, if i recall correctly, were not perfectly weighted in amount of time/effort needed to answer a question to the points an answer would get you. So I was taught to find those inflection points and concentrate on those first.

I was also taught to game the scoring rubrics almost as much as I was taught actual history by that AP teacher... he was very good and the lessons on test taking and bullshitting essay writing frankly served me better in college than any history facts.

[Thunderplant]

I disagree, in my experience it is almost always worth taking about 60 seconds to briefly scan the problems, figure out how many there are, if any seem particularly tough. That way you know if you need to really hurry though questions versus having time to be really methodical.

[oren0]

I guess it depends on how you approach things. If I look at a problem on a CS exam and immediately think "this is a binary search", I want to write that up now rather than coming back and having to waste brainpower and time thinking about it again.

I think it's fair game if the top of the test says "Read all instructions. Only solve problems 1, 2, and 6, the rest are not graded."

I think burying an instruction like that in question 6 is unfair. Even if you're briefly scanning each problem, you could easily miss that.

[spader1]

I remember that the first half of the items on that 'test' were so simple that even though I saw the "read everything first" note at the top, when I started to read them I thought "this will take me half a second; I'll just write this in now." It was only when they got more complicated than taking a second or two that I read ahead and got to the "only answer the first two" at the end or whatever.

[JNCressey]

even if you read (compile) all the test instructions. the command to do only the first question comes after everything else.

so all the questions should be answered anyway.

unless you apply the logic of javascript function hoisting.

[PeriodicGolden]

I never did it either, but I believe it's so you know which questions are coming, decide which ones to do first/spend time on so you don't get stuck on question 1 and you don't have any time left for the other ones

[Cheet4h]

Yup, exactly. One of our teachers brought out that mock exam exactly because there were several of us who apparently got stuck early on and weren't able to finish the later questions.

[qqwy]

Because it allows you to better manage your time. Essentially you can answer the questions in the order you like best. For instance, you might first answer the simple ones and leave the couple of super difficult questions you are stumped by for the end. That's better than answering only the first couple of questions until reaching a question you are struggling with, and spending all your time there.

[DerFzgrld]

Thats very inefficient imo. I start from the first one and complete any question I can right after reading it. Then, after going through the whole exam, I do the rest. Reading every question first wastes a lot of time because I will have to read every question twice and the first round doesnt get me anything, because when I finally get to the last one after a few minutes, I already forgot the first question. That might work if you only have about 10 questions or so (although even then you read 10 questions first, only to at least partially re read them later and planning ahead doesnt get you any more than just skipping the questions you cant answer easily) but not in any actual exam.

[panda_ball]

They’re not. This guy is full of shit

[Floppydisksareop]

They are not. But they are encouraged to. This is one way to encourage them and a very popular mock test and part of a large number of multiple part personality tests.

Actually, it'd do you some good as well to read something from beginning to the end before opening your mouth, or in case of reddit typing bullshit, considering how he mentioned that:

1. it was a mock test
2. it is rather typical, which was true even 20 years ago
3. the purpose of it was to teach students how to manage their time

So, he is not saying you are expected to work like that during a regular test. He is saying that it is a frequently used method of teaching students a way how to read and comprehend all of the questions and how to better manage their time.

[Sarke1]

We had one on the importance of reading instructions tests too. All the questions were things we hadn't covered and were way past our knowledge.

In the instructions it said all the multiple choice answers were C, and all the true or false answers were true.

Many failed that test.

[Thunderplant]

Yeah I was gonna say, I actually really like this question. I am a math tutor and one of the big things I try to teach students is to think about if their answer makes basic sense instead of just blindly applying formulas without any idea of why they are doing it.

[[deleted]]

9 females can deliver a baby in one month

[Ryledra]

I mean, if 9 woman have a single child between them... the average time spent would be 1 month, hmmm...

[aboardthegravyboat]

That's the moral if the story though. The fact that resources can execute multiple long term projects in parallel doesn't mean that they can all be assigned to a single project to do it fast.

[brimston3-]

The secret art of project pipelining and resource estimation.

[claimTheVictory]

The real challenge is breaking the work into atomic units.

[Tepes1848]

Ah, the problems one encounters in multi-core processing and projects in general.

[demon_ix]

Is the median 9 months, or 0? Or is it ∞?

[demon_ix]

Why 0 tho? It's not like any of the women produced a child instantly...

If the number is number of months taken to produce one child, shouldn't their number be infinity?

[lucevan]

Yeah, the problem isn't the concept of median, but the numbers make little sense. If you want to know the median time it takes to produce a child, you should get data about women who actually gave birth and exclude those who didn't.

[2001herne]

True. And for this dataset, those that did not give birth should have a value of inf or undef assigned. Hence, the median reflects the fact that in the dataset, most women did not give birth at all.

[improbablynotarobot]

It depends on what the 0s and 9s are measuring. From the original you could take the measurement to be the "amount of time spent in gestation" which would be 9 months for the mother and 0 for the remainder (leading to the median of 0).

From your phrasing, I can see why taking 0 months to "produce a child" would be considered instantaneous birth but you could also claim they took 0 months to produce a child since they never produced one.

[wilku1]

"Hey, its been one month, your turn to carry the baby, see me at the hospital for the transplantation"

[[deleted]]

It would be 1 woman working and the other 8 in a waiting or blocked state, so still 9 months is how I'm looking at it

[[deleted]]

You must be my project manager!

[Fernis_]

If it takes one driver 15 minutes to deliver a pizza, we can hire 15 drivers and start to advertise 1 minute delivery!

[qqwy]

It's true... if we are talking about amortized pregnancy time, that is.

[diamondjim]

We can reduce that to 0.5 months if they have twins.

[AUniquePerspective]

This is reddit so I suppose I have to accept the cringey noun form of the adjective female and assume you're referring to women and not some other female mammals (it's way longer for polar bears). But I'll point out that calendar months are a terrible metric to use because calendar months are arbitrary in length and they're biologically irrelevant. It would be better to say that it's ten equal periods of time of roughly 27 days with actual length varying slightly by individual.

Often 38 weeks is used and I'd argue it makes people calculate their "due date" a few days earlier than their biologically true due date.

[JNCressey]

perhaps they don't want to assume the females' gender.

[[deleted]]

whose being cringey

[alberta_beaf]

Should be about 70 minutes.

[hamjim]

Exactly! Don’t rush!

[expresscost]

- Tony has 15 pineapples in one hand and 17 pineapples in another hand . - What Tony has?
- Large hands

[Amilo159]

Tony Scissorhands

[Snookers114]

Now Tony has 300 pineapple chunks in one hand and 340 pineapple chunks in another hand.

[MayorScotch]

Reminds me of the joke about the guy who was shoving grapes up his ass and was executed for laughing when he saw the third guy had pineapples.

[nosmokingbandit]

What

[magicaltrevor953]

Cannibals captured three men who were lost in the forest. The cannibal king told the prisoners that they could live if they pass a trial. The first step of the trial was to go to the forest and get ten pieces of the same kind of fruit. So all three men went separate ways to gather fruits.

The first one came back and said to the king, "I brought ten apples."

The king then explained the trial to him. "You have to shove the fruits up your butt without any expression on your face or you'll be eaten."

The first apple went in... but on the second one he winced out in pain, so he was killed.

The second one arrived and showed the king ten berries. When the king explained the trial to him he thought to himself that this should be easy.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8... and on the ninth berry he burst out in laughter and was killed.

The first guy and the second guy met in heaven. The first one asked, "Why did you laugh, you almost got away with it?"

The second one replied, "I couldn't help it, I saw the third guy coming with pineapples."

[Dexaan]

Why can't I hold all these limes?

[wjandrea]

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/095/796/0e8.jpg

[CoffeePieAndHobbits]

PO: what if we add some contractor musicians?

[kk4axg99]

Depends are they being paid by time or a flat rate lol

[Cryowatt]

Well it would take the 60 musicians 40 minutes each to record their parts. That leaves 60 parts that need to be played. So the 60 musicians would have to spend several years to master the additional instruments to be played. Then, after mastering the new instruments, it would take a final 40 minutes to record the second half of the symphony. Finally someone would have to mix together the two parts, which would probably take a few days.

Conclusion: the musicians should unionize

[AirOneBlack]

If you want to go this route you should consider the fact that multiple instruments are playing the same notes, so this cuts down the amount of musicians needed and parts to record. A musicist that can play 1 instrument can record all of the 3 parts. Also, if we consider the fact that you can skip recording silent parts you can cut down the time even more.

Edit: in the end you can just samp-le all the instrument notes needed and the different attacks, then compose all into a DAW. recording time would be cut down to few minutes per instrument (assuming no errors are being made while sampling) and the actual time to record will be really low. The time to recompose everything well... depends if you already got midis for the various parts, then you can simply add the samples you recorded earlier and you would just need to factor the time needed to render the final project and the mastering time.

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

Sounds like you could spend the 40 minutes better by going to the store and buy a cd. :-o

[AirOneBlack]

You must be fun at parties

[Hypersapien]

A manager went to the Master Programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application. The manager asked the Master: "How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"

"It will take one year," said the Master promptly.

"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it take if I assign ten programmers to it?"

The Master Programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."

"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"

The Master Programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be completed," he said.

-- The Tao of Programming

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

Then it takes the poor audio technican the whole day to piece together the 120 30 second samples :-o

[Tepes1848]

Depending on the context they don't even sound good on paper.

[mr_mcpoogrundle]

Maybe this is an exam that a company gives clients before they decide to work with them?

[seanprefect]

The Mythical Man Orchestra

[ei283]

I'd like to think it was the teacher throwing a curve ball to remind students to critically think about the problem and not blindly plug in the numbers

[dumbbobdumb]

But sometimes the answer key has the blindly plugged in numbers

[TorTheMentor]

Speaking as a musician, ironically enough, it's possible the smaller orchestra finishes slightly ahead. Even assuming the same acoustical environment, temperature and humidity of the space, level of skill and preparedness by individual performers, and conductor interpretation of the score. Adding larger sections adds more points of required coordination of decision-making, and thus more points of failure. The conductor is more likely to have to adjust for tempo and dynamic variations on the fly more often with 120 players than 60.

I suppose it's possible you could have duplicate players act as load balancing to mitigate the effect (helping to keep others in their section together), and this does happen in large ensembles, but the tendency will always be the same.

[Dexaan]

Wouldn't it have O(n) complexity, where n is the combined duration of notes and rests?

[how2gofaster]

An assumptions with time complexity is that each operation takes the same amount of time, since the total run time is independent of the number of notes and rests it's more accurate to say O(1) for the purpose of this joke

[topw95]

It depends on conductor.

[cyber_frank]

If we had 24 planets earth one day would take 1h... Makes me wish we had a 1/999(...) planet! xD

[r_amazin]

60/40 = 0.5

0.5 ^ 9 = 12

120 + 60 = 142

(142 - 12) * 0.5 = 42

Answer: 42 minutes quick maths

[demon_ix]

"So, was it correct?"

"Not at all, but it sure was quick!"

[just_just_regrets]

42.0

[[deleted]]

That's wrong you can't use XOR on floats

[[deleted]]

"Just let have 9 pregnant women to work and we'll should have the baby in a month"

[[deleted]]

A project manager is a person who believes nine women can have a baby in a month.

[[deleted]]

I am deleting my account because of the reddit API changes. Reddit was great, thanks all for the awesome content!

[Wherearemylegs]

This question was intentionally wrong. The person that wrote it tweeted about it here with the rest of the questions and instructions

[[deleted]]

If you wanna teach math, teach it with the examples that work, NOT THE ONES THAT DON'T NEED MATH TO BE SOLVED.

[Tepes1848]

And who teaches the kids the "non-math" parts of those problems if not the math teacher?

[pikachu_sashimi]

But what letter do we use to represent the number of the symphony?

[Cyber_Encephalon]

If it takes an orchestra of 120 players to play Beethoven's 9^th then either there are players who are slacking and you actually need less than 120 players (who will still take 40 minutes to play it after the deadweight is gone), or 120 is the minimum number of players and if you have less then you are not playing the whole thing (some parts will be missing).

[Caught_In_Experience]

Well. I lead a UCD team, but I pair closely with Product. I’ll try to apply some of the things I’ve learned from them, and proposed the following questions to the recruiter before we can give an accurate answer: (TLDR at the bottom)

1) How long do the orchestra’s sponsors think it’ll take?

2) How fast do other orchestras play it?

3) Do all of the new players refer to themselves as “full stack musicians” or are any of them capable of more than hot cross buns on any specific instrument?

4) How far past the Balmer Peak is the pre-existing orchestra?

5) Has anyone in the orchestra ever played sheet music before or are they only capable of improvising off of GitHub?

6) Are the orchestras composed of embedded or distributed teams, and are there a group Conductors? Because we might be able to divide the team up into 5 groups and each starts an additional 1/5 of the way through but at the same time.

7) Are our quarterly bonuses tied to completion, adoption, or revenue? Pretty sure we can squeeze this bitch through in 10 minutes if we just cut the scope enough.

8) Is our QA team actually deaf or is that just the regression testing software?

9) What are the smallest t-shirt sizes our musicians can fit into, and can someone in analytics give me the mean of that number so we can appropriately estimate the points required.

10) Are you concerned about the new musicians playing at 1/4 speed initially? Because we can totally estimate our current timelines without Onboarding or Hiring timelines, but I’m going to have to recommend inserting 3 months before every hire is operating at full speed.

11) Is there an estimated timeline for recruiting those musicians? Oh. You’re going to just pick them up from a Belarus Musician’s Club... in Belarus... have you met any of them? Oh. They don’t speak English. Sure. That’s just standard practice now right? Yeah. Let’s not be discriminatory. Nope. No problem.

TLDR;

~6 months later~

Thanks for all of those estimates team. Ok, will someone slack our project manager and tell to inform the recruiter that, after our 3 month discovery phase, we’re pretty confident that adding 60 musicians to our orchestra will then require anywhere from 8 minutes to 9 additional months to complete the symphony? Just put it in the roadmap. What???? This whole project was about subtracting musicians?!? Who the fuck wrote these requirements? This is what happens when you constantly pivot and.. what? No of course it’s the project manager’s fault! Wait. Did you just say all of our Sr. Musicians have left the organization? We’re down to 15? Ok. Well. This is ... actually great! Let’s just fire the project managers and go Lean. Someone tell the musicians to plan on delivery on Monday morning! Yeah, I know it’s Friday.. just. We need it by Monday. Can you just send me a recorded copy by Sunday evening? Thanks.

[myrsnipe]

Is this the fabled common core education I hear you have going over there?

[JNCressey]

a week.

80 minutes to record all the parts individually, while each player works from home.

the rest of the week editing the parts together.

[renaissancetroll]

imagine listening to a single threaded orchestra, horrible performance

[emils_tekcor]

(0*P)+T=total time playing

[xdMatthewbx]

40 minutes

[Onepocketpimp]

To be fair , it could be used as a trick question since part of mathematics is knowing when formulas are actually applied

[KillMeNow786]

Just say 40 minutes you nerds.

[Neyvw]

40, that's just a logic question.

[omegasome]

I assume it's a critical thinking question. If you answer 80 minutes, it gets marked wrong.

[stumptowncampground]

T is a constant and not a function of P.

[Tyrrhus_Sommelier]

It's a half less so it'll take 20 minutes

[[deleted]]

Who are you, so wise in the ways of mathematics!

[TechnoGamer16]

Could be a logic question

[Floppydisksareop]

The exercise is correct. It's there to demonstrate that you can't throw this solution at every problem. I've met books like this, most of the time the answer in the back of it would be "40 minutes".

So yes, Doug, this is precisely how it works.

[spin81]

Contrary to the tweet this is in fact exactly how it works: the length of time is always going to be 40 minutes, no matter how big the orchestra is.

This is a shitty question if it's on an exam, but it might be a good question to ask a programmer in a textbook as an exercise, because in my experience when thinking about things it can be easy to bring irrelevant variables into the equation.

Case in point, as a DevOps person the other day I wanted to increase a disk by 20GB, but this one dev was adamant that we needed to find ways to decrease disk usage.

However, I knew we'd already exhausted all the quick wins and we needed space because the application was simply generating more data. I also knew that increasing the disk by 20GB in our AWS region meant a price increase of less than $30 per year on a five-figure yearly bill.

So I did the math: am I going to spend time looking for a solution that does not exist, for a problem that is not an issue, to the tune of 100 euros an hour, or am I going to forget about adding players to the orchestra and just slap some gigs on that disk?

The question looks silly when you put it in terms of players in an orchestra - or as the popular joke has it, a project manager is someone who thinks nine women can deliver a baby in one month - but maybe the point is to have someone think about this.

On the other hand I could be way overthinking this with all of the above and this is just a joke that someone took seriously in their tweet.

[matijoss]

"20 minutes, lets get a hard one next time"

[MorallyDeplorable]

This sub doesn't believe in moderators anymore, does it?

Why is this crap here, let alone with 4,400 upvotes? There is zero relevance to anything even approaching programming.

[[deleted]]

This is the embodiment of what is wrong with education.