Clarifying variables

Other Courses Talk
,
#1

I don’t mean to be a pain in the sphincter (as Monty Python’s Icelandic honey merchant would say), but I believe the variables and what they represent could be explained better here.

What’s implied but not explained is that f and t represent the number of pickups of each type, not one pickup or one coin as he says in the video, or the value of the coins. This may be obvious to many, but I had to think a couple of minutes to figure it out, and it might be easy to miss for some and end up generating confusion.

So then when Gary says 5f + 3t, this means (number of pickups) x their value.

Perhaps this won’t be useful but just in case :slight_smile:

1 Like
#2

Thanks for raising this @olidadda and apologies for only just responding - I only just saw your post.

You’re absolutely right;
t represents the pickups worth 3 coins and
f represents the pickups worth 5 coins.

So, for the first equation:
f + t = 15
this tells us what combination of pickups can we have that will make up that total count.

And the second equations:
5f + 3t - 10 = 45
is trying to find out which combination of pickups will result in the desired number of total coins, which is why we multiply the pickup type by its value.

When we write things algebraically, it’s common practice to put the number before the variable so,
5f + 3t
is saying “how many pickups worth 5 coins and how many pickups worth 3 coins”.
But if you wanted to write this in the same way you might say it, it would be something like;
(f * 5) + (t * 3)

They both mean the same thing, it’s just one is more compact than the other.

Thanks for pointing this out and I hope this explanation helps to clarify things.

1 Like
#3

Hi Gary,

means that we have the second equation to what t and f should be. You decided that the player collected 5 from f type and 3 from t type, meaning 5 of 5 coins worth pickups and 3 of 3 coins worth pickups. And we also know that f+t=15. This brings us to;

5f+3(15-f)=55
5f+45-3f=55
2f=10
f=5 and t=10

I just could not understand why we decided that player collected in this amount.

#4

Wow yeah this left me a bit confused at first so I decided to stick my head in here to see what was up and yeah it made sense in the end.

Privacy & Terms