Anybody care to guess how ugly the 'trig' solution is? Also, BrowserUK, why did you decide to go the trig route? Are you (as guessed below) coming from a navigator-type background? Most of us, as you will see, attacked this using basic algebra. Not that there is anything wrong with that :)

I will say, though, I do tend to make problems too hard myself. for instance, the US S.A.T. (that easy test was long long long ago) isn't supposed to require Calculus -- only basic Trig, but I used a few Integrals in random places just because. It's whatever tools that are sharpest that get used, I guess. My trig is kind of rusty. When I try to write OpenGL every now and then, I end up with some very weird physics :)

--FlyingMoose

In reply to Re: A little schoolboy math (but my schooldays were a long time ago). by flyingmoose
in thread A little schoolboy math (but my schooldays were a long time ago). by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.