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Perhaps scope for a British contribution here!? -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 01 May 1999 23:38 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Vampire Number Search Dear IECC Project Subscribers, Her is an interesting project that you might be interested in joining. It is short and simple. Project: The Great Canadian World Wide Web Vampire Number Search Project Overview: My grade 12 computer science class and I are looking for about 1,000 participants who will run a small computer program on their computers overnight, and email back a data file of results. We would like to get participants from all over the world. Details: A vampire number is a whimsical mathematical idea, introduced by computer graphics guru Clifford Pickover, in the June '95 issue of Discover magazine. It makes note of the fact that when you multiply two numbers, all of the digits in those two numbers occasionally show up in the result. For example, 21 x 87 =1827, or 146 x 938 = 136948. The number 1827 is a four digit vampire number, and 136948 is a six digit vampire numbers. Looking for these numbers makes for an interesting computer programming project. I have several web pages that describe vampire numbers in detail. See http://grenvillecc.ca/faculty/jchilds and follow the link(s) to vampire numbers. (Or you can go directly to http://grenvillecc.ca/faculty/jchilds/vamli12.htm) To find all the 10 digit vampire numbers (over 100,000 of them) it took my computer science class all weekend (50 hours) using 16 computers. To find all the 12 digit vampire numbers, it would take one computer, running continuously, about 8 years! My computer science class hopes to find them all by dividing the job up among a large number of computers. If a teacher would like to coordinate a group of students, or a single student, we would love to have you participate. We will email you a program, you run it overnight, or maybe over a few nights, and email back the resulting data file. (Or you could just run it in the background.) Participants and/or schools will be highlighted on the vampire number web site. We would like to start the program on May 1st, and have it completed by the end of the month. We hope to hear from you! ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ---- - IECC-PROJECTS is intended for teachers seeking classroom partners for an intercultural e-mail project. To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, please send an e-mail message to: "[log in to unmask]" More information is available at URL: http://www.iecc.org %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%