As Summer Fades

Autumn Plant 
Slip from summer into fall.
Then winter brings us cold, white days,
But spring, that wonder of it all,
Leads back to summer anyway.

Linked to Cosmic Photo Prompt where Dale offers the theme of “as summer fades”.

Also linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. It was raining this past week and so I worked on a puzzle in computational number theory. The challenge was to verify the 3x+1 trajectory-length records by running a different program to find them. Using Python my best time for integers under 670,617,280 had been over 700 seconds. Last week I was able to reduce that to 352 seconds. That made me smile. If I believe what others have achieved, they can do it in under a few seconds. That’s my goal unless it stops raining. Even if I get it below 10 seconds, it is about as significant as solving a 1000-piece jig-saw puzzle, but at least I will be able to verify the larger records that have been found.

First Leaves to Fall
Cosmic Photo Challenge

Author: Frank Hubeny

I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.

24 thoughts on “As Summer Fades”

  3. My degree is Mathematics and I have worked as a programmer in the past, but I haven’t tried anything like that before. It might be a good puzzle to play with… I like the photos and poem, though to me it all comes around to Autumn again – that’s my favorite 😉

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    1. My degree is in Mathematics also which is what draws me back to these kinds of problems. Someone a year ago introduced me to the 3x+1 conjecture that all positive integers iterate to 1 and then I found a list of records and then I wondered how do they know those actually are the correct records. That led to the puzzle. Thanks, Trent!

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    1. 🙂 Here’s my algorithm for socks. I keep only white or black socks in the drawer. I grab whatever’s available (of the same color). If I can’t find any then that’s a sign I should do the laundry. However, sometimes I don’t want to. Then the program just keeps running. Thank you, Chel!

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  6. Oh my goodness, Frank, you’ve gone way over my head–as I was never a fan of Math! But I’m duly impressed, as you likened it to doing a 1000-piece puzzle…I can relate to that as I’m a huge fan of jigsaw puzzles!! And as always, I love your poetry 🙂 Blessings on your week!

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      1. The big ones (1000-piece) are a challenge I enjoy–500-piece ones I can do in 2 nights 🙂 I salute you, regarding the programming exercise!!

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          1. They really do! I can get totally immersed in a puzzle…it’s a good addiction 🙂 But my collection has overrun my small apartment…I should give some to charities 🙂

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  7. Pingback: The Weekly Smile Recap 9/14 – 9/21/2020 | Trent's World (the Blog)

  8. I have mixed feelings about this summer ending. In many ways I am glad to see the summer of 2020 go, the sooner we move ahead the better, so much not fun stuff going on. On the other hand, I realize I’m wishing my life away which is never good. Regardless, your poem was great, spring is just around a corner somewhere, right?

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