2 ms·
I've read about it many years ago, possibly in some book about cryptography, maybe. AFAIR it's used in some algos in this field. But its application to countin
by jagrsw 5y ago
I've read about it many years ago, possibly in some book about cryptography, maybe. AFAIR it's used in some algos in this field.
But its application to counting troops... well, this sounds like a really overdone method of doing this. Maybe it has been tried once or twice, but I guess it's probably more of an urban legend, than something that could be pragmatically used on a daily basis.
- dmurray 5y agoThe legend could reasonably be true if you assume the generals just used the process for communication: "my troop strength is (3, 7, 2)." Actually lining up the troops seems unnecessary: it takes far less mathematical sophistication to calculate the moduli than to reverse engineer the total number.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThe Chinese Remainder Theorem does come up in a very real Chinese context, the cycle of sixty, in which e.g. 甲寅 identifies 51 as the number which is simultaneously 1 (mod 10) and 3 (mod 12).