Advent of Code 2023 Day 6 (BaseA Style)

[AlteryxCommunityTeam]

Discussion thread for day 6 of the Advent of Code - https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/6

[JeffF]

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[rachel_k]

So glad today was easy!

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[JarrodT]

Had to tap into my 8th grade math for this one... It's been a while since I've dealt with parabolas...

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Total_distance = hold_ms * (total_ms - hold_ms)
9 < hold_ms * (7-hold_ms)
9 < 7 * hold_ms - hold_ms^2
0 < 7 * hold_ms - hold_ms^2 - 9
0< -hold_ms^2 +7hold_ms - 9

x = (7 +- Sqrt( 7**2 - 4*-1*-9)) / 2*-1
x = (7 +- sqrt( 49 - 36)) / -2
x = (7 +- 3.6) / -2
x = (-10.6 or -3.4)/ -2
3.4/2 < x < 10.6/2
1.7 < x < 5.3

I'm going to take the ceiling (round up) for dist_a and Floor for dist_b after adding a slight edge (+.00001 to dist_a and -.00001 to dist_b) to BEAT the record (since the quadratic formula solves to equals)

Then, I'll subtract the two numbers and add 1 (to include the first number which isn't counted when subtracting).

dist_a formula: ceil(abs((-[Time] + SQRT(POW([Time],2) - (4*-1*-[Distance]))) / 2*-1)+.00001,1)
dist_b formula: FLOOR(abs((-[Time] - SQRT(POW([Time],2) - (4*-1*-[Distance]))) / 2*-1)-.00001)

[OllieClarke]

Day 5 pt 2 still to come after last night's fiasco. Good to have a nice one again :)

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I also like that I can detour 1 tool's difference for part 1 and part 2

#TeamBruteForce

[OllieClarke]

@cgoodman3 obvs different hardware, but my brute force runs in 28 seconds

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even with its 53,897,697 rows generated

[mceleavey]

After Day 5 mistreated me badly (mostly due to my own incompetence), today was like a big cosy hug made of clouds.

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I did part one using a simple iterative macro, but then realised it was much quicker just to generate the rows...

M.

[cjaneczko]

Quite easy today. I did type the table up into a Text Input, to make it easier. 

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[cjaneczko]

@cgoodman3 I had the same thought process when tackling this. Took 30 seconds to run

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Generated over 61M rows lol.

[alisonpitt]

Kickin' it 8th grade-style with a little quadratic formula (after the long way in part 1)!

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[Carolyn]

Solved! For Part 2, I initially used my Part 1 brute force solution. I then redid it using the quadratic formula (complete with singing the song to myself for the formula 🤓)

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