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Discussion on: This is day 2, Still haven't written a single line of code for this codewars challenge

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tosinibrahim96 profile image
Ibrahim Alausa

Thanks Curtis. Here is a link to the problem codewars.com/kata/5541f58a944b85ce...

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curtisfenner profile image
Curtis Fenner

First, the problem defines the Fibonacci numbers, though very poorly. (There are lots of questions about the Fibonacci numbers on Codewars, so they are probably assuming you have seen it before).

Each term in the Fibonacci sequence is the sum of the previous two:

  • 0 + 1 = 1
  • 1 + 1 = 2
  • 1 + 2 = 3
  • 2 + 3 = 5
  • 3 + 5 = 8
  • 5 + 8 + 13
  • ......

This can be written in the mathematical notation, F(0) = 0, F(1) = 1, F(n) = F(n-2) + F(n-1), which is also included in the problem.

So this is task (1): come up with code to compute the Fibonacci numbers. You want to be able to go from an n to an F(n). That means either writing a function F which when called with n returns the n-th Fibonacci number, or filling an array F with the Fibonacci numbers, where the nth index has the nth Fibonacci number.

Next, the problem says you need to be able to take a prod, and find an n such that F(n) * F(n + 1) = prod. This is task (2). If you think about this, it doesn't actually depend on the Fibonacci numbers at all -- it works on any sequence. So you can solve and test just this part of the problem using something simpler, maybe just the counting number 1, 2, 3, 4, ... or the squares 1, 2, 4, 9, 16, ..., or the odd numbers 1, 3, 5, ... etc.

Finally, you need to plug these two things together, which is task (3) and the simplest task.

The note at the bottom about the golden ratio is just a "hint", but it's not actually a useful hint. I would ignore it.