[macosxnerd101]

You might want to check out the Compound Interest Calculator snippet I wrote. Also, in the future, please properly indent your code so we can more easily follow it. Thanks for helping us help you!

[macosxnerd101]

Basically, my snippet uses the Compound Interest Formula. You can use it to calculate Compound Interest without looping, so in O(k) time with the formula vs. O(n) with a loop.

[macosxnerd101]

Are you familiar with exponential and logarithmic equations? You might want to set up a log equation to solve for time (t).

[Dogstopper]

      do {
	     balance = (price + (price*rate) - 50);
	     interestpaid = (price*rate);
	            
	     System.out.println(balance);

	     result = (balance +(balance*rate) - 50);
             diffinterestpaid += interestpaid;
             count++;
	} while (balance>0.0);

I agree that you need to rethink your design because in order for there NOT to be an infinite loop, the condition must change (so that balance will at some point be 0). However, you never change balance except once, and after that, it remains the same. Personally, I think that you have way to many variables. Look into a logarithmic formula to solve this as you can directly find the time through a simple algebra

[macosxnerd101]

macosxnerd101, on 18 March 2010 - 08:51 AM, said:

Also, in the future, please properly indent your code so we can more easily follow it. Thanks for helping us help you!

Please properly indent your code. We can't easily follow it with your current spacing conventions.

Also, take a look at the formula from the Wikipedia link, and try to make a logarithmic equation from it to solve for the appropriate variable.

After taking a look through your revised code, I wanted to talk about about these two lines. For the line years = x;, you will get a syntax error b/c x has not been initialized, so you can't assign its value to years. Also, Math.pow() accepts two params- the base and the exponent. So it should look like Math.pow(base, exponent). In addition, it returns a double value, so why are you invoking it on its own line, where the value returned won't be saved?

years = x; 
Math.pow(1+(rate/numTimesCompound));