Well, I thought I bought a TI-89, very powerful, extra complicated, calculator (so I wouldn't look silly still using my TI-85 from 12 years ago) but it turns out that the first feature I have used on it is the Sum notation and it was to calculate when I'll be halfway done with the Bunny Hop baby blanket I've started knitting.
Now, normal rectangular knitting is EASY to calculate, Rows/2 gets you haw many rows in order to be halfway done, if you do rows/2*stitches per row you get the # of stitches you'll have knitted. No fancy calculator needed, but I have yet again started a giant mitered square. This time I have cast on 484 stitches and I'll be decreasing 2 stitches on each corner every other row (this time I allowed for a corner stitch in each corner), meaning my stitches per row are constantly changing and I'll be halfway done with the total stitches long before I am halfway done with the rows. Enter new calculator:
60
E (8x-8)*2 = 28272
x=2
(sorry, blogger won't deal with a Sigma symbol for some reason...)
I'll have 120 rows, but since each row is repeated (the *2) I'm just looking at 60 (which is also the starting # of stitches between each marker) for this count. Remember, I'll still have 4 stitches left in the end because I added those corners.
So 28272 stitches for the whole thing... with some playing around I found I'll be halfway done when I'm down to 43 stitches in each part, or
about 34 rows in.
Nerd out.
I need to get back to the calculus now....
2 comments:
Will you be having this as a question on a test? ;-)
I'm seriously considering it as a warm-up problem... but I don't want to scare the dear children...
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