Unfortunately, I think the lowest we can go is -5e^(jπ)

Stupid electrical engineers. J is not an appropriate substitute for i. If you're too stupid to differentiate between current and imaginary numbers, you probably shouldn't be engineers. :-)

Does that mean you're in?

Actually, it can be very hard to differentiate if both were I. For instance, if we had the equation Psi(r)=e^(ikr)mu(r), how can I possibly know if that i is current or root(-1)

I is current, i is imaginary...

We could do 5! points if we want to keep it friendly, or 6! if you want something incredibly cutthroat....

If we take the mean of the standard deviation of the list of values possible for the Phase Length variable, we'd be looking at something like four days. I'd suggest 25% of that value

Duh. Me programmer. Me not understand complex maths. But me write programs to solve them...

Anyhow, I saw someone say a while back that the cube root of -1 was an imaginary number and had to laugh. square root, sure. But consider that a negative number taken to any odd power is a negative number, therefore a negative root of an odd value (ie. cube root) is very much real and solvable. Cube root of -8 is -2.

Anyhow, keep the bet at or below 50 and the phase at or above 24 hours and I'm in.

Meh I'm in a few >5! individual bet WTA games already (like, 4). So I'm not sure I want to throw in that sort of money just yet. I suggest the 6th taylor polynomial of the function f(x)=3x^2+2x+1 where 4≤x≤5.

Taking a taylor polynomial of a polynomial is retarded.

Mathspeakfail.

It's taylor polynomial of a function. It's a continuously differentiable function so go F yourself :P

(i.e. F(rlumley)=?)

f(x) = 3x^2 + 2x + 1 is a polynomial. It also happens to be a function. But since you want to take a taylor series of a polynomial (And provided the taylor series is of higher degree) the taylor series is exactly the same as the polynomial, making it, as I said, retarded, and you, supwise supwise, a woozer.

10 if you know what I'm referencing.

Dude rlumley I don't care. The taylor polynomial exists, which means I can reference it, whether or not it's the same thing as the damn function. Now please stop being pedantic and beat me at diplomacy if you want to talk.

I don't particularly want to talk. Really, I just want to mock you. :-)

I program. I'll play, but as you can see I have few points. As for phase length, I'd like 24, 25, or 48 hours.

Children (rlumley and ava)... Don't make me pull over this fucking battleship. I will even if it means the whole fleet has to wait on us. I swear to God I will bruise your asses so bad! ;-)

@Kat, what environments do you develop in?

Who let you drive the battleship? I'm going to have to talk to your CO.

Excuse me, I'm going to go drive the Carrier. :-)

(Which, coincidentally, could pwn your battleship's ass.)

I suggest an anon public press game where the theme will be math+battleships. Great swearing is allowed and recommended since nobody will know who you are until endgame anyway.

@Draugnar: I use Windows at work (not by choice), doing Perl scripting and app development in C#. At home I run Linux, specifically the most recent Ubuntu LTS, and I've got a language interpreter in development in C, a Ruby on Rails web project, and a lot of Perl, including a Befunge-93 interpreter I wrote just last week.

If the theme is battleships I call shotgun on England.

@rlumley

i is often used for current for small signal, but I agree, in context it should always be possible to tell the difference.

So, we have

0) abgemacht
1) ava
2) rlumley
3) strat
4) Draug
5) Kats
6)

I'd like to propose 2^5 + 2^2 day phases and 2^6 .

Um, I'd just blast a hole through the flight deck with my deck guns. Aircraft carriers are useless nose to nose and WWI aircraft (this is 1901 after all) are useless in general. I'll take a WWI battleship over a WWI carrier any day. And I'd take a WWII or later battleship over an equivalent carrier nose to nose as the battleship would take out any deck crew and staged aircraft with her AA guns before they ever got off the ground. Carriers are only useful if they have the distance to get their aircraft aloft.

36-day phases? Hell no!

I like the zero-based counting and the powers of two though. :-)

*ground = deck

You're OK with 25 and 48 phases, but not 36? : )

Oh, i c...

Day!=Hour fail...

I'm okay with 36 hours. :-P

@Draugnar, what do you develop in?

Dude, Draugnar. Carriers always have a battle group with them. You didn't think I commanded a single measly carrier, did you?