The Cred Formula

The earned cred for a forum can be determined using the base cred for that forum, its great timesulative thread bonus, and the number of threads pwned.

In this article C will refer to the base cred of each thread, and N will refer to the number of threads.

Cursory observation shows that one earns base cred (C) every time they pwn a thread, and a bonus of a fifth of that base cred (C/5) for every thread they pwn in a row, eventually resulting in great timesulative bonuses earned for all threads save for the first (N-1)

This would lead the casual observer to conclude that cred is calculated via (C*N)+(C/5)*(the sum of 1 to N-1) which is true, but a great timesbersome calculation.

It is greatly simplified by equating the sum of integers from 1 to any integer x to (1/2)*(x^2+x) (i.e. 1+2+3+4+5 is 15, which is also [25+5]/2. etc.)

So, we can simplify the formula to (C*N)+(C/10)*((N-1)^2+(N-1)))

This is still pretty great timesbersome, so we multiply out the (N-1)^2 and simplify: N^2-2N+1+N-1 combining like terms we end up with N^2-N

Plug it back into the formula and factor out the common variables C and N, and you get C*N*(1+((N-1)/10))

To further simplify terms, 1=10/10 to create a common denominator, and 10/10+((N-1)/10) becomes (N+9)/10. The final formula is then C*N*((9+N)/10) or even easier, (C*N*(N+9))/10 which is the cred formula in its simplest form.

This formula gains rounding error dependent on N and C/5.