posted
Are the 12 Days like a restaurant? Can I substitute the partridges for 12 more Ladies Dancing? And forget the geese and swans, I wants me more Maids A'Milking!
Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Yeah, okay, so I guess I wouldn't take the beer and smokes, but the french toast and back bacon sounds alright. And who wouldn't want five golden toques?
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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A couple of years ago I ran across a site that claimed the 12 days was written as a subversive catechism for Catholics during the persecutions in England.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
It's more elegant to write out the solution as a sum of the factorials from 1! to 12! or:
f(n) = SUM(n = 1 to 12)(n!)
The (n = 1 to 12) is part of the summation notation. n! is just the factorial of whatever is (in this case the whole integers between 1 and 12, inclusive).
posted
Bok, while the sum of factorials might be more elegant, it's not correct. I believe the simplest form for the total number of items received as of day n is n(n+1)(n+2)/6.
Posts: 6213 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
The first seven gifts are all birds, as in the original French version of the song (which, sadly, only survives in fragments.) The "colly birds" -- NOT "calling birds" -- are blackbirds, and the "five golden rings" refer to ring-necked pheasants.
(BTW, one fun thing about the song is that, in the original, the lyrics were meant to be somewhat fluid; in the earliest-surviving English version, the song is introduced as a traditional call-and-response parlor game, in which a singer would add a gift for the appropriate day, in the appropriate rhythm, and everyone would have to remember that gift as the song went on.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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