Why do I have negative 'a' here?

JavaScript
1

I am trying to come up with some kind of fancy solution for this:

Right now I am building some function which will allow to generate Pythagorean triples. Wikipedia for this stuff

Can’t figure out why am I getting some negative numbers with the below code.

for (let n = 1; n<= 10; n++) {
  const m = n++;
  const a = Math.pow(m, 2) - Math.pow(n, 2);
  const b = 2 * m * n;
  const c = Math.pow(m, 2) + Math.pow(n, 2);
  console.log('for m:', m, 'for n:', n);
  console.log('a: ', a, 'b: ', b, 'c: ', c);
  console.log((Math.pow(a, 2) + Math.pow(b, 2)), Math.pow(c, 2));
  console.log('---------------');
}

/*
Output:

for m: 1 for n: 2
a:  -3 b:  4 c:  5
25 25
---------------
for m: 3 for n: 4
a:  -7 b:  24 c:  25
625 625
---------------
for m: 5 for n: 6
a:  -11 b:  60 c:  61
3721 3721
---------------
for m: 7 for n: 8
a:  -15 b:  112 c:  113
12769 12769
---------------
for m: 9 for n: 10
a:  -19 b:  180 c:  181
32761 32761
---------------
*/
2

Look at your console output. If m is 1 and n is 2 then what do you get with this line:

const a = Math.pow(m, 2) - Math.pow(n, 2);
3

Thanks!!
Oh, I see. I think this:

was an outstanding example of nonsense from me :joy:

1 Like
4

Don’t beat yourself up too much. These problems are intended to be hard. Sometimes there is a neat trick for solving them but it usually includes some pretty advanced math. I’m no mathematician so I don’t claim to know how to solve this one, that’s for sure.

1 Like
5

No, I am not going to blame myself. This one was kinda fun actually)
Usually this kind of mistakes means that little break is needed)

6

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