5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

If you multiply together the number of fingers on every person's left-hands? (For the purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers, for five fingers per hand) how long the number would be assuming 5 billion people on earth.

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

0.
It would only take one person to have no fingers on their left hand to make it zero as anything multiplied by 0 is 0.

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

If all 5 billion people have 5 fingers on their left hand then the answer is 5^5 billion else answer will be 0 if any of this 5 billion people have no fingers on his/her left hand.

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

Point 1 : In the above post, user has posted two answers in one post, using an If Else statement. So either the last answer in the post should be counted. Or it should be considered invalid, as this is not there in the rule - "only one answer per post."

Point 2 : Question is not clear, 5 fingers per person for only who have thumb or otherwise?

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

The only assumption here is we have 5 billion ppl on earth.
We don't know if we have exceptions like someone without fingers on left hand etc ..

There can be a lot of cases like some 1 has 1 finger, 2 fingers, 3 fingers .. no fingers etc..
And, I don't think it's possible to consider all of them.

So.. i think the answer will be :

The length of the number is
= 5 billion * log(base 10) 5
= 5 * 10^9 * 0.69897000433601880478626110527551
= 3494850022 digits

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

5 fingers are considered and not 4 fingers and 1 thumb.

Many are close or I must say quite close but still no perfect answers.

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

Zero, because there is at least one person with a missing left hand.

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

So the answer is 1. because the length of the number zero is 1.

Or if you just want the length of 5^5000000000, that's easy enough too, with a little help from logs and a calculator:
5^5000000000=10^(log(5^5000000000))
=10^(5000000000*log(5))
5000000000*log(5)=3494850021.680094023931305526377 5

so the length of 5^5e9 is 3494850022

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

Bingo

Re: 5 billion | 28 Jul 2009
 

I thought we will end up with no current answer.
'coz every1 answered 0, but shabbir needed the length.

Congratz xpi0t0s. :happy: