## riddle of the seats

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , on November 8, 2019 by xi'an

An arithmetic quick riddle from The Riddler:

If an integer n is a multiple of every integer between 1 and 200, except for two consecutive ones, find those consecutive integers.

Since the highest power of 2 less than 200 is 2⁷=128 and since 127 is a prime number, the number

$2^6\times \prod_{i=0,i\ne 63}^{99} (2i+1)$

should work in that it contains all odd integers but 127, and all even numbers, but 128. Of course a smaller number that avoids duplicates by only considering the 44 primes other than 127 and 2 to a power that keep them less than 200 is also valid. Which gives a number of the order of 1.037443 10⁸⁵.

## another attempt at code golf

Posted in Books, Kids, R with tags , , , on June 12, 2019 by xi'an

I had another lazy weekend go at code golf, trying to code in the most condensed way the following task. Provided with a square matrix A of positive integers, keep iterating the steps

• take the highest square $$𝑥²$$ in A.
• find the smallest adjacent neighbour $$𝑛$$
• replace with x and n with nx

until no square is left (with neighbour defined as either horizontally or vertically and without wrapping around). While I managed a 217 bytes solution, compared with Robin’s 179b improvement, which remains surprising readable!, the puzzle offers two further questions:

1. is there a non-iterative way to find the final matrix B?
2. the puzzle assumes that A satisfies that at each step, the highest square and the smallest neighbour n will be unique, and that the sequence will not repeat forever. Is there a fool-proof way to check this is the case?

## an attempt at code golf

Posted in Kids, R with tags , , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2019 by xi'an

Having discovered codegolf on Stack Exchange a few weeks ago, I spotted a few interesting puzzles since then but only got the opportunity at a try over a quiet and rainy weekend (and Robin being on vacation)! The challenge was to write an R code for deciding whether or not a given integer n is congruent or not, when congruent means that it is the surface of a rectangle triangle with all three sides rational. The question included a pointer to the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture as a mean to check congruence although the real solution was provided by Tunnell’s Theorem, which states that n is congruent if and only if the number of integer solutions to 2x²+y²+8z²=n is twice as much as the number of integer solutions to 2x²+y²+32z²=n if n is odd and  the number of integer solutions to 8x²+y²+16z²=n is twice as much as the number of integer solutions to 8x²+y²+64z²=n if n is even. Although this is only true for squared-free integers. (I actually spent more time on figuring out the exact wording of the theorem than on optimising the R code!)

My original solution

p=function(n){
for (i in(n:2)^2)if(n%%i<1)n=n/i
if(n%%2){d=8;f=2;g=16}else{d=2;f=1;g=8}
A=0;b=(-n:n)^2
for(x in d*b)for(y in x+f*b)for(z in g*b)
A=A+(y+z==n)-2*(y+4*z==n)
A==0}


was quite naïve, as shown by the subsequent improvements by senior players, like the final (?) version of Guiseppe:

function(n){b=(-n:n)^2
for(i in b[b>0])n=n/i^(!n%%i)
P=2^(n%%2)
o=outer
!sum(!o(y<-o(8/P*b,2*b,"+")/P-n,z<-16/P*b,"+"),-2*!o(y,4*z,"+"))}


exhibiting a load of code golf tricks, from using an anonymous function to renaming functions with a single letter, to switching from integers to booleans and back with the exclamation mark.

## Le Monde puzzle [#1083]

Posted in Books, Kids, R, Travel with tags , , , , , , on February 7, 2019 by xi'an

A Le Monde mathematical puzzle that seems hard to solve without the backup of a computer (and just simple enough to code on a flight to Montpellier):

Given the number N=2,019, find a decomposition of N as a sum of non-trivial powers of integers such that (a) the number of integers in the sum is maximal or (b) all powers are equal to 4.  Is it possible to write N as a sum of two powers?

It is straightforward to identify all possible terms in these sums by listing all powers of integers less than N

pool=(1:trunc(sqrt(2019)))^2
for (pow in 3:11)
pool=unique(c(pool,(2:trunc(2019^(1/pow)))^pow))


which leads to 57 distinct powers. Sampling at random from this collection at random produces a sum of 21 perfect powers:

 1+4+8+9+16+25+27+32+36+49+64+81+100+121+125+128+144+169+196+243+441

But looking at the 22 smallest numbers in the pool of powers leads to 2019, which is a sure answer. Restricting the terms to powers of 4 leads to the sequence

1⁴+2⁴+3⁴+5⁴+6⁴ = 2019

And starting from the pools of all possible powers in a decomposition of 2019 as the sum of two powers shows this is impossible.

## Le Monde puzzle [#1075]

Posted in Books, Kids, R with tags , , , , on December 12, 2018 by xi'an

A new Le Monde mathematical puzzle in the digit category:

Find the largest number such that each of its internal digits is strictly less than the average of its two neighbours. Same question when all digits differ.

For instance, n=96433469 is such a number. When trying pure brute force (with the usual integer2digits function!)

le=solz=3
while (length(solz)>0){
solz=NULL
for (i in (10^(le+1)-1):(9*10^le+9)){
x=as.numeric(strsplit(as.character(i), "")[[1]])
if (min(x[-c(1,le+1)]<(x[-c(1,2)]+x[-c(le,le+1)])/2)==1){ print(i);solz=c(solz,i); break()}}
le=le+1}


this is actually the largest number returned by the R code. There is no solution with 9 digits. Adding an extra condition

le=solz=3
while (length(solz)>0){
solz=NULL
for (i in (10^(le+1)-1):(9*10^le+9)){
x=as.numeric(strsplit(as.character(i), "")[[1]])
if ((min(x[-c(1,le+1)]<(x[-c(1,2)]+x[-c(le,le+1)])/2)==1)&
(length(unique(x))==le+1)){ print(i);solz=c(solz,i); break()}}
le=le+1}


produces n=9520148 (seven digits) as the largest possible integer.

## Le Monde puzzle [#1063]

Posted in Books, Kids, R with tags , , , , , , on August 9, 2018 by xi'an

A simple (summertime?!) arithmetic Le Monde mathematical puzzle

1. A “powerful integer” is such that all its prime divisors are at least with multiplicity 2. Are there two powerful integers in a row, i.e. such that both n and n+1 are powerful?
2.  Are there odd integers n such that n² – 1 is a powerful integer ?

The first question can be solved by brute force.  Here is a R code that leads to the solution:

isperfz <- function(n){
divz=primeFactors(n)
facz=unique(divz)
ordz=rep(0,length(facz))
for (i in 1:length(facz))
ordz[i]=sum(divz==facz[i])
return(min(ordz)>1)}

lesperf=NULL
for (t in 4:1e5)
if (isperfz(t)) lesperf=c(lesperf,t)
twinz=lesperf[diff(lesperf)==1]


with solutions 8, 288, 675, 9800, 12167.

The second puzzle means rerunning the code only on integers n²-1…

[1] 8
[1] 288
[1] 675
[1] 9800
[1] 235224
[1] 332928
[1] 1825200
[1] 11309768


except that I cannot exceed n²=10⁸. (The Le Monde puzzles will now stop for a month, just like about everything in France!, and then a new challenge will take place. Stay tuned.)

Posted in Kids, R with tags , , , on July 6, 2018 by xi'an

Another quick riddle from the riddler: solve the equation

EXMREEK + EHKREKK = ?K?H?X?E

which involves every digit between 0 and 9. While the puzzle can be unravelled by considering first E and K, which must be equal to 6 and 3, a simple R code also leads to the conclusion

isok <- function(a,b){
s=as.numeric(unlist(strsplit(as.character(sum(10^(6:0)*a)+
sum(10^(6:0)*b)),"")))
if (length(s)==7){ goal=FALSE}else{
goal=(length(unique(c(a,b,s)))==10)&(a[2]==s[6])&
(s[8]==a[6])&(s[2]==a[7])&(b[2]==s[4])}
return(goal)}

pasok <- function(T=1e3){
for (t in 1:T){
a[1]=a[5]=a[6]=6;a[7]=3
digs=sample(c(0:2,4,5,7:9),4)
a[2:4]=digs[1:3] b[1]=a[1];b[2]=digs[4];
b[3]=a[7];b[4]=a[4];b[5]=a[1];b[6:7]=a[7]
if (isok(a=a,b=b))
print(rbind(a,b))}}

> pasok()
[,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7]
a    6    2    4    7    6    6    3
b    6    8    3    7    6    3    3


which sum is 13085296.