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A comment on Bobby Fischer dead at 64. Parent comment

Re:Bobby Fischer dead at 64 by eru on Monday January 21, 2008 @03:29AM (#101488)
Nice. How did I get the result in the first place?

I know that this sum can be expressed as a cubic polynomial. So I just evaluated the sum at four data-points (n=0,1,2,3) and used those to determine the four coefficents by solving a linear equation system.

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Re:Bobby Fischer dead at 64 by jgrahamc on Monday January 21, 2008 @08:11AM (#101534)
Turns out that drawing a picture really helps: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101532
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Re:Bobby Fischer dead at 64 by eru on Monday January 21, 2008 @06:12PM (#101875)
You can usually come up with a clever picture only after you understood the problem - not before.
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