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 April 28th, 2018, 02:36 PM #1 Member   Joined: Sep 2014 From: Sweden Posts: 94 Thanks: 0 How to describe a programming array mathematically? Hi! This post is mostly out of curiosity. I have a program that you give a text file with hours and minutes you have worked. Like this: workedHours.txt 09.30-14.00 09.30-15.00 09.30-14.00 08.30-18.00 And the program automatically calculates the hours and minutes worked. It does that by putting the hours into one array and minutes into an array. So how do you describe these arrays mathematically? Here is a picture to make it clearer: http://www.mediafire.com/view/oue81l...428_232906.jpg Last edited by greg1313; April 28th, 2018 at 05:00 PM.
 May 3rd, 2018, 04:33 AM #2 Math Team   Joined: Jan 2015 From: Alabama Posts: 3,261 Thanks: 894 Does "09.30-14.00" mean that a person worked form 9:30 am to 2:00 pm? That is 4 hours and 30 minutes. I "rounded" 9.30 up to 10.00 to get 14.00- 10.00= 4 hours. Similarly "9.30- 15.00" is 15- 10= 5 hours and 30 minutes, "9.30-14.00" is again 14- 10= 4 hours and 30 minutes, and "8.30- 18.00" is 18- 9= 9 hours and 30 minutes. You array of hours will be "4, 5, 4, 9" and your array of minutes will be "30, 30, 30, 30". Thanks from DecoratorFawn82
May 3rd, 2018, 05:38 AM   #3
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 Originally Posted by DecoratorFawn82 So how do you describe these arrays mathematically?
Your arrays are lists of integers. Use a letter to name each list and, if necessary, another letter to specify the length of the lists. Your lists should be equally long (because for each number of hours there is an associated number of minutes), so one letter will suffice to specify their length.

Your program may need to decide what to do if an odd number of times is found for some day. For example, this could be treated as an error in the data. This type of program typically calculates the totals in hours and minutes, so as to avoid the possibility of rounding errors.

June 10th, 2018, 01:46 PM   #4
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 Originally Posted by Country Boy Does "09.30-14.00" mean that a person worked form 9:30 am to 2:00 pm? That is 4 hours and 30 minutes. I "rounded" 9.30 up to 10.00 to get 14.00- 10.00= 4 hours. Similarly "9.30- 15.00" is 15- 10= 5 hours and 30 minutes, "9.30-14.00" is again 14- 10= 4 hours and 30 minutes, and "8.30- 18.00" is 18- 9= 9 hours and 30 minutes. You array of hours will be "4, 5, 4, 9" and your array of minutes will be "30, 30, 30, 30".
Yeah, that is absolutely correct. I live in Europe so 24-format is used in my program.

June 10th, 2018, 03:54 PM   #5
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Quote:
 Originally Posted by DecoratorFawn82 So how do you describe these arrays mathematically?
Describe?
"how is time worked calculated using these 2 arrays"?

June 10th, 2018, 04:24 PM   #6
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Quote:
 Originally Posted by DecoratorFawn82 So how do you describe these arrays mathematically?
Mathematically, an array is just a function from some set of natural numbers to some set. f(1) = 47, f(2) = 12, f(3) = 87.5, etc. It's just a list of elements. In some programming languages you can index arrays starting from arbitrary values like f(-5). The main thing is that you have a finite index set and a mapping that associates some value to each index. Not very useful in practice, it's mostly useful to build up further abstractions.

June 11th, 2018, 02:17 AM   #7
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Quote:
 Originally Posted by DecoratorFawn82 Hi! This post is mostly out of curiosity. I have a program that you give a text file with hours and minutes you have worked. Like this: workedHours.txt 09.30-14.00 09.30-15.00 09.30-14.00 08.30-18.00 And the program automatically calculates the hours and minutes worked. It does that by putting the hours into one array and minutes into an array.
That's an odd way of doing it. Most programming languages come with their own Datetime classes for just this sort of problem which are nice to use.

Quote:
 So how do you describe these arrays mathematically? Here is a picture to make it clearer: File sharing and storage made simple
Let vector of hours be h and vector of minutes be m and specify an index of 2 for a later time than an index of 1, then the duration in minutes is

$\displaystyle \Delta m = 60h_2 + m_2 - (60h_1 + m_1)$

If you want, you can divide the result by 60 and take the floor to get the number of hours worked and the remainder to get the left over minutes.

Last edited by Benit13; June 11th, 2018 at 02:19 AM.

June 11th, 2018, 09:50 AM   #8
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Quote:
 Originally Posted by DecoratorFawn82 . . . the program automatically calculates the hours and minutes worked.
Why? Just as a programming exercise?

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