Erik has a combination lock and has forgotten the combination. He wonders how many possible combinations there are for the lock. Episode 1110 suggests some solutions.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
Well, usually at this point I'm promoting one of my books, PivotTable, Data Crunching.
Today, well, I promote the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Might be useful in helping solve this problem: I got an email today from Erik.
Erik has a huge, huge problem.
Erik has a combination lock and has forgotten the combination.
And there are 5 rings on this lock, each ring with 10 different letters.
Staples sold a while ago, the word lock.
He says: how many combinations?
How many combinations are there?
Well, you know, what we have to do is: we basically have to take 10 and multiply it by itself 5 times.
A 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 or the fast way to do that is to raise it to the 5th power, so 10, put a little carrot in, =10^5.
And let's throw a comma in there, we'll see that that is 100,000 possible combinations.
Isn't that annoying, when you put the comma, they automatically put two decimal places.
It'd be nice if they just had a comma, no decimal places.
I know, Format Cells.
So a hundred thousand possible combinations.
Erik, if you want to solve this, now I figured out, you know, maybe just spinning real fast you can probably do about 2 per second.
So that means that basically you can do 30 per minute, so will be that many minutes.
And divide that by 60: 55 hours of mind-numbing combinations in case you want to do that.
Now down here, just for the heck of it, I came up with a list of all hundred thousand possible words and, you know, some of these probably are not words, like, you know… “mason” – well, that's a word.
But “masoa”, probably not likely they use that.
I do want to suggest the one that you try, is word “space”, since that was the default combination and it's so confusing to change the combination, most word locks are probably still using word “space”.
Give that one a try, otherwise I'd go out and buy a new lock, certainly easier than doing 55 hours of mind-numbing every possible word.
And don't forget, you're going to have to spend six bucks just to get the dictionary to go through and figure out which words to use.
Erik, thanks for sending that question in, thanks to you for stopping by, I’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Well, usually at this point I'm promoting one of my books, PivotTable, Data Crunching.
Today, well, I promote the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Might be useful in helping solve this problem: I got an email today from Erik.
Erik has a huge, huge problem.
Erik has a combination lock and has forgotten the combination.
And there are 5 rings on this lock, each ring with 10 different letters.
Staples sold a while ago, the word lock.
He says: how many combinations?
How many combinations are there?
Well, you know, what we have to do is: we basically have to take 10 and multiply it by itself 5 times.
A 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 or the fast way to do that is to raise it to the 5th power, so 10, put a little carrot in, =10^5.
And let's throw a comma in there, we'll see that that is 100,000 possible combinations.
Isn't that annoying, when you put the comma, they automatically put two decimal places.
It'd be nice if they just had a comma, no decimal places.
I know, Format Cells.
So a hundred thousand possible combinations.
Erik, if you want to solve this, now I figured out, you know, maybe just spinning real fast you can probably do about 2 per second.
So that means that basically you can do 30 per minute, so will be that many minutes.
And divide that by 60: 55 hours of mind-numbing combinations in case you want to do that.
Now down here, just for the heck of it, I came up with a list of all hundred thousand possible words and, you know, some of these probably are not words, like, you know… “mason” – well, that's a word.
But “masoa”, probably not likely they use that.
I do want to suggest the one that you try, is word “space”, since that was the default combination and it's so confusing to change the combination, most word locks are probably still using word “space”.
Give that one a try, otherwise I'd go out and buy a new lock, certainly easier than doing 55 hours of mind-numbing every possible word.
And don't forget, you're going to have to spend six bucks just to get the dictionary to go through and figure out which words to use.
Erik, thanks for sending that question in, thanks to you for stopping by, I’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
