Road Sign Math

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Hinton To Alderson

April 22nd, 2006 · 2 Comments

West Virginia

H.B. Elkins found this mathematically significant road sign in rural West Virginia between the towns of Hinton and Alderson.

Mr. Elkins pulls some factorials to make this work.

3! + 3! = 12

This sign is in West Virginia. See sign on map!

Tags: West Virginia

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 RanWiz // Apr 23, 2006 at 6:56 am

    Nice simple factorial sign — but it points out a spot where the SCORING rules could be modified to reduce the score for a sign that uses factorials of such low numbers.

    Factorials of 1 and 2 are disallowed. The score for using 3! should be lower than 5 points (maybe 1 or 3 points). 4! could be 2points, 5! = 3 points, etc. Or, as was done with the ordinary ‘elegance’ score for numbers, write a simple function that is assymtotic to 5 points.

  • 2 Road Sign Math Administrator // Apr 23, 2006 at 7:05 pm

    This has already been done to an extent. The scoring was modified at the same time that 1! and 2! were disallowed. Now the score for a factorial is the same as the number being used, up to 8. So, 3! is 3 points, 5! is 5 points, 8! is 8 points and 20! is 8 points. You could argue that it should start at 1, or not be linear, which I’m open to listening to.

    All in, I think a 7.5 score for this sign is in the realm of reason.

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