Earlier this evening, I enjoyed preparing an answer to the Quora.com question “How long will it be until we run out of combinations of notes for a classical music composition?” Back-of-the-envelope calculations can be interesting and fun, and you don’t really know where it’s all going to lead you until you get there…

If you’re interested, here’s my answer, which involves:

• Piano chords…
• Some back-of-the-envelope calculations…
• Combinatorial math (mid-level),…
• Ruby (the programming language), and a program…
• and some very large numbers!…

Check it out — the answer might astonish you!