h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has often be said that something is a difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. I have never yet found the needle in these great pales of hay. Can someone/s please help me find out just how difficult we are talking here, by answering How do I find a needle in a Haystack?

DD

I actually think that with today's technology this would be quite easy, (metal detector, sonar or something), so the world needs a new new analogy.....

Perhaps "Like looking for a semi-conductor in a chip shop", lame I know!!

Yep Far too easy... Portable X Ray machines in all.
Or the fact that most needles are a cheep steel, a magnet would be fine.

But a Tooth Pick In a Haystack? now that would be tricky..

As the previous entries indicate, we are living in a technologically advanced society - I think the real trick today is to find the haystack in the first place!

Thatchers use a 4 foot (~1 metre) needle (crafted from a tree limb) to stitch the straw pattern onto the apex of the thatched roof and other poky tasks.

Often the straw that is prepared and ready for use is piled in a stack at the bottom of the thatcher's ladder.

Sometimes when the thatcher puts down his needle to do something else, it does not stay put and rolls off the roof to embed itself into the hay stack. The thatcher then has to climb down the ladder and find his needle in the hay stack.

In fact it is not that difficult - so long as you do not get bitten by the rats that like the warmth of hiding under straw. (It is always wise to tie your trousers just below the knee with some stout sting so they do not mistake your trouser leg for a burrow!)

So now you know: it is a relatively simple task.

Not really too helpful lads lets assume I have a standardish sized sowing needle, have a haystack, they do exist around where I am, and have no technology at hand and that includes my mobile phone. Any ideas to define how hard it would be as I have always wondered since I played in the haystacks of my childhood.

Comments?

What's a "sowing needle"? Some other farming tool I'm not familiar with?

Well spotted make that sewing needle.

Maybe the analogy "needle in a haystack" should be reversed so that it reads "haystack in a needle"
Finding a haystack in a needle would be far far harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
In fact finding a haystack in a needle would be nigh on impossible.

Typical project manager - lots of detail and background to the problem but when it comes down to it, no actual answer. .

The answer in pseudo-code is:
While bale of straw is not empty
Pick up one object from it
If object is a needle

Else
Put object to one side
End
End While
If not then
Appropriate response

and further analysis shows that the problem is not complicated, just tedious and repetitive....so we should pay some high priced consultant on an hourly rate (i.e. me) to do it

I think there is a great deal of scope for parallelism in this problem, which your pseudocode fails to capture.

Is finding a haystack in a needle as hard as putting a camel through the eye of a needle? I suppose it would be a bit of a trick to get a camel through the eye of a needle if the needle was lost in a haystack. Has anyone ever tried getting a camel through the eye of a haystack? Is this difficult? How about if the haystack is lost in a needle? I think we're bordering on cruelty to animals here.

~Irving

While there has been much digretion in response to this well-known term, would there be any so bold as to agree with the phrase "It would be as hard to find a needle in a haystack as it would be to define how hard it is to find a needle in a haystack."

I think from the contents of this forum it is almost certainly true.

I think you should hold a barn dance. Invite lots of people, including me and provide bailed hay for seating. Give everyone lots of beer, especially me until suitably inhebriated while at the same time playing loud music, keeping everyone dancing, and generally wearing everyone out.Eventually all your guests, including myself, will need to have a sit down.

This is the point at which you should observe carefully because knowing my bleeding luck I'll sit on one of the hay bails, leap 10 feet in the air, land on a pitch fork, which not only impales my right foot but also lunges forward at a rate of knots with the handle smashing into my face, breaking my bloody nose, giving me two black eyes and knocking me unconscious.

This would be an opportune time to retrieve your sodding needle from my left buttock.

You are absulutely positive it's not the right cheek?

This is all very well.
(Actually, now I come to think of it, it's probably terminally ill)
But why would anyone in this day and age want to find a needle in a haystack in the first place.
Perhaps the term "needle in a haystack" is not so much an analagy as a warning.
The term could be (in a roundabout sort of way) saying:
Dont' use a needle anywhere near any haystacks if you can possibly avoid it. Anyon stupid enough to do this will have a hell of a time finding it.

Just a thoought

Thought