need to find which numbers (3+) in a column sum to a value

[Guest]

need to find which numbers (3+) in column sum to a value

I have a column of 100+ numbers. I know that the column should sum to x,
but is summing to y instead. I need to find which numbers in the column sum
to the difference of x and y. Then I can remove them from my column.

Thanks.

 

[Dave O]

This is difficult, because you need to check all the combinations of
those 100 numbers to find your difference. The number of combinations
from a pool of 100 numbers is, frankly, staggering: 2 to the 100th
power, or 1,267,650,600,228,230,000,000,000,000,000.

Can you reduce this list? If you know the difference between x and y,
and there are numbers in your list that are greater than that
difference, you can remove them from consideration- assuming there are
no negative numbers in the pool.

I've written software to do exactly this sort of math, but the sun will
burn out before that many combinations are evaluated!