THE ITERATIONS ARE IMPOSSIBLE FOR IT TO BE 17294532

[piecesofme454]

I was on i-am-lost.com and i listened to the iteration number and wrote it down "17294532" and wanted to see whether the number would be right. SO I recruited my friend in geometry, I'm in Pre-Algebra, to help me figure out how many times a 26 second message, I timed it on I-am-lost.com would have played. So heres our thinking:
Friend: well you have to figure out how many seconds are in 16 years and 5 months.. so basically figure out how many days, then multiply that by 24 (because 24 hrs in a day) then multiply that by 60 (60 min in 1 hr) then that by 60 (60 seconds in 1hr)
Friend: then 16 years has 4 leap days
Me: yeah so i do 12 x 365, then 4 x 366
Me: added together
Friend: yeah
Friend: im pretty sure
Me: which would be 18984 days?
Friend: i got 5844 try again
Me: ok
Me: now i got 1604544 ill do it again
Me: i just got that 1604544 again
Friend: hmmm its like (12 x 365) + (4 x 366) try that
Me: k
Me: alright ur right 5844 now i add 31,28,31,30,31 together cuz thats 5 months and add the sum of that to the product of what we just did right?
Friend: is 31,28,31,30,31 the number of seconds?
Me: no the number of days in jan, feb, march, apr, and may which is the five months it would have to be
Friend: yeah
Me: i got 151 as that sum, and 5995 as the total days
Friend: yep
Me: then times that by 24?
Friend: yep because there are 24 hrs in a day
Me: ok i got 143880
Friend: yeah now you have to multiply that by 60 cuz thats how many minuts in a hr
Me: ok
Friend: the multiply that by 60 cuz there are 60 seconds in a minute
Me: for minutes i got 8632880
Friend: i got 8268000
Friend: try again
Me: ok
Me: i got 8632800 now and i did it on a calculator too and it said the same thing
Friend: ok then im probably wrong
Me: alright but then times 8632800 by 60
Friend: yeah
Me: i got 51796800
Me: add an extra 0
Friend: yeah
Friend: now divide it by 26 to find out how many times that message thingie played
Me: ok
Me: i got 19951846.153846 repeating
Friend: i got 19921846.153846
Friend: theyre pretty close... theres going to be some eror cuz of the leap days and stuff
Me: yeah
Me: you were right, i typed it in wrong

So basically:
5844 days in 16 years including leap years
151 days in 5 months
5844 days total
143880 hours in 16 yrs and 5 months
8632800 minutes in 143880 hrs
517968000 seconds in 8632800 minutes
26 second long message
19921846.153846 or rounding 19951846 times played.
HOW CAN THIS BE IF THE ITERATIONS SAY 17294532, WHEN DOING THE MATH SAYS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN 19951846?

[LostinTrinity]

Yeah, if you do it back-wards from the 17294532 number it comes out to about 14.25 years. hmmm another mistake by the writers or is our math wrong somehow?

[yung23]

Sayid did it in his head, without a computer or calculator, he obviously forgot leap years. I got lost doing the math, good work.

[LostinTrinity]

True enough, I don't think I could have done it in my head in 6 days let alone the 2 or 3 minutes he did it in. I'm not good at math either (unless I have a calculator. LOL) ;)

[kat]

I also did it backwards from 17294532 and got about 14.25 years (not taking leap years into account.

17294532 * 26 seconds = 449657832 seconds
449657832 / 60 seconds = 7494297.2 minutes
7494297.2 / 60 minutes = 124904.9533 hours
124904.9533 / 24 hours = 5204.373055 days
5204.373055 / 365 days = 14.258 years

[Abraxas]

If Sayid forgot leap years it's less, not more than 14.25 years.
Of course, it's perfectly understandable that he didn't get that exactly right. Try adding up such big numbers in your head while a Sawyer throws in, "Don't forget to carry the one, chief!". :\

@Kat
The leap days don't matter two much. You end up with 14.2488 appr. which is roughly short of one day. Hope, that's right.

[MacLeod]

Well for one thing is that he did not have a calculator with him so he would most likely that he rounded. I did this cheating using a pen a paper and with rounding first of all making the calc easier instead of using 26 seconds round to 30 seconds with this you would 1440 minutes times 2 which is 2880 and divide it into the number which is 6005 rounded which is the number of days then divide it again by 365 which is 16.452 for the years so its about 16 years and 5 months. Remember he did this in his head rounding and approx are the quickest way to do this and lets have it. This just for me to do it on paper was longer than what they had him do this calc.

[Stu1961]

Surely you mean the calculated number of years is incorrect. The iterations ARE correct. Did Sayid ever say how many seconds he timed the message to be? If it was any where close to 30 seconds - he would have been crazy (unless he's Rain man) to try to use anything BUT 30 for his calculations. That would work out to 16.45 years. Either way - it's a long time, and errors like that - or inaccurate estimations - add realism. That's what happens in real life.;)

[LostinTrinity]

Not to mention whether it's 14.25 or 16.5 years it's still a hell of a long time to be stuck on an island with a gigantic invisible monster chasing you.

[Abraxas]

Assuming the monster was there all the time.
Assuming the monster is chasing somebody.
Assuming the monster is even a monster and not something else...?

Assuming is so much fun. :D

[Master Xander]

His computations may be wrong/incomplete for the same reason Shannon's translation was incomplete.

[Iphigenia W]

Did Sayid ever say how many seconds he timed the message to be?

Ok, virgin poster here so please be kind. :\

I do rememeber that when Sayid started the computation he said the message was about 30 seconds long, so he must have based the computation on that.

[Klang007]

Sayid, let it not be mistaken, is a mathmatical phenom to even think in his head with numbers that large. I pride myself in being able to calculate apprx how much my grocery will total to before going to the register. But this...man, that's Rain Man calibur crazy!

I can only go as far as 8647266 minutes in my head.

[Rooster]

Sayid calculations are correct I just did them over in my head 8o and allowing for the deduction of all Holidays his math is right on:rollin :hat .

[piecesofme454]

ok, i just thought I'd post it, I understand where you guys are coming from.

[azteclady]

Keep on nit-pick... er, posting. We can always use more input!

Beto
obsessed? moi?

[PlaneJane22]

Also, I suck at math and don't know if this is a factor, but wasn't Sayid assuming the message was 30 seconds long instead of 26?

Would that make a difference?

[Klang007]

PlaneJane - it would make about 3 years worth of difference. But 16 1/2 years or 12.45 years or whatever it came out to be..still a long duration.

[imflynn]

here's my .02.

it all depends on where the message is timed from. if the message itself is 26 seconds long, you have to add the length of time it would need be to say "17294532 Iteration", which is about 6 sec, and every earlier time it was said into account. making the message, when averaged out, to be about 30 sec long for each iteration. it takes about 1 sec to say "iteration" itself, then working out the length for each and every iteration, it's easier to give a quick estimation between 1 and 6 sec, so about 3 sec. so, depending on where the time is taken from, 26 sec long with the "17294532", than about 14 years. if it is 30 sec with the "iteration 17294532" added, than 16 yrs. however, if the message is 30 sec in its entirety, without the "iteration 17294532" added, than the message is about 18yrs old. all in all, it still seems like a big time frame.

[JacksGirlfriend]

Math isn't my thing so...
I'm going to throw this possibility out for discussion.

How do we know time is passing the same on this island as it does in the rest of the world?

JacksGirl

[Klang007]

Math isn't my thing so...
I'm going to throw this possibility out for discussion.

How do we know time is passing the same on this island as it does in the rest of the world?

JacksGirl

unless this island is in an alternate universe where the planet is smaller/larger and moving faster/slower...I'd say that time variation won't be much of a factor. But then I'm sure the survivor's would have mentioned something about feeling heavier/lighter.

Well, this island could be like...that movie where a whole city of human turn out to be living in a space ship?

[deviance]

Actually it is possible. In fact, it IS 16 years and 5 months based on the approximation. Sayid is a smart man :P.

Let's do the math:

We'll use this number:
17294532 (The show actually shows iterations 17294531-17294535 before the transceiver goes dead).

Sayid approximates each iteration at 30 seconds:
17294532 * 30 = 518835960 seconds

Seconds in a minute:

518835960 / 60 = 8647266 minutes

Minutes in an hour:

8647266 / 60 = 144121.1 hours

Hours in a day:

144121.1 / 24 = 6005.04583* (repeating) days

Days in a year:

6005.04583* / 365.25 ( to compensate for a leap year every 4 years) = 16.4409... years

16.44 years is 16 years and 5 months, considering there are 12 months in a year, instead of it being base 10.

The math works out if you approximate it to 30 seconds. Of course, being a second or so off in the approximation makes it off.

Also, I don't know what you are talking about with 26 seconds. I timed it, and got 30 seconds. You have to take the interval from the BEGINNING of one iteration ALL the way to the beginning of the next, which is almost exactly 30 seconds. You can't stop your timer at the end of the iteration, because there is a certain "lag time" between one iteration and the next. This doesn't take anyone from geometry or prealgebra to do, it's just arithmetic, but obviously someone better at math would be more familiar with how to do it.

The calculations are correct people.

[proteus74]

Well, if the message itself is actually 30 seconds long, then Sayid was also wrong, because he didn't take the iteration time into account. Granted, that'd be a sliding variant, because the number would get bigger every iteration.

[maxpublic]

You decided that the full message was 26 seconds long, while Sayid claimed it was 30 seconds long. Of COURSE you're going to get a different result than Sayid did! If you go by Sayid's guesstimation then his math is correct - it comes out to approximately 16 years and 5 months.

I'm with Sayid on this one. The iterations were obviously speeded up for dramatic effect and to keep the scene from dragging out a few minutes longer than it needed to. This became apparent when the entire message wasn't repeated with each iteration, which we learned was the case when we got the full translation. The term is "artistic license".

Taking that into account and trusting in Sayid's estimation of the message length, his calculations are spot-on.

Max