what's new about powers ? A003313

[Jud McCranie]

At 01:02 PM 11/3/2001 +0200, Antti Karttunen wrote:

>Does this "optimality" refer to finding the optimal (i.e. in this case,
>the minimal) value of n, or finding what's that minimum value,
>in the optimal amount of time?

The minimal number of multiplications required.


>If what is meant is the former sentence, then could we have sequence
>for those n, for which the factor method is the best (or better than
>the power tree method)?


Yes, we could.  I think the book gives enough information to generate those 
sequences.


+---------------------------------------------------------+
|     Jud McCranie                                        |
|                                                         |
| Programming Achieved with Structure, Clarity, And Logic |
+---------------------------------------------------------+