Question

I have a mathematical formula to apply: I wrote a non recursive code (sadly due to my lack of advanced coding skills), but a math.stackexchange user suggested me a recursive way to do the same:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/92942/applying-a-math-formula-in-a-more-elegant-way-maybe-a-recursive-call-would-do-t

Unfortuantely I have no experience both in recursive calls coding and in matrices implementation in PHP.

Would you please give me an help on translating what he wrote in PHP?

I know SO policy is: do your homework & researches before posting, I did what I could but this really seems out of my capabilities.

Answer 1

two things:
1. there are better tools for matrix calculations than php (MATLAB for example)
2. your code looks fine, and you can generalize it (make it work for any n >=3 winners) by modifying your code from:

...
foreach ($stack as $s) {
  array_push($result,array($s,0,0,0));                       
}
...

to:

   //$n = number of winners
   ...
    foreach ($stack as $s) {
      $tmp_arr = init_array($s,$n);   
      array_push($result,$tmp_arr);                      
    }
    ...

needless to explain what init_array() does 😉