Thread: problem with while loops

Thank you all so much for your help!!! It's really been very helpful... and I finally got my entire program to work!!

You have a semicolon on the line if (counter % 2 != 0); which means that squareSum = squareSum + (counter * counter); falls after the if statement. It's best to always use braces.

The following doesn't really help you learn programming, but the sum of the first n odd squares can be computed efficiently with

Code:

int sum_first_n_odd_squares = (n * (4*(n-1)*(n+1) + 3)) / 3;

so that if n were 5, sum_first_n_odd_squares would be equal to 1*1 + 3*3 + 5*5 + 7*7 + 9*9.

Using this formula, you could write

Code:

int x = (firstNum + 1) / 2;
int y = secondNum / 2;
int oddsq_sum = (y * (4*(y-1)*(y+1) + 3) - x * (4*(x-1)*(x+1) + 3)) / 3;

I guess the moral is that instead of spending a minute writing a while loop, you could spend five minutes inventing a formula!

Dude so much easier with a loop... And takes no time at all... Save math for the fun stuff...