Le Monde puzzle [#840]
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Another number theory Le Monde mathematical puzzles:
Find 2≤n≤50 such that the sequence {1,…,n} can be permuted into a sequence such that the sum of two consecutive terms is a prime number.
Now this is a problem with an R code solution:
library(pracma) foundsol=TRUE N=2 while (foundsol){ N=N+1 noseq=TRUE uplim=10^6 t=0 while ((t<uplim)&&(noseq)){ randseq=sample(1:N) sumseq=randseq[-1]+randseq[-N] noseq=min(isprime(sumseq))==0 t=t+1 } foundsol=!noseq if (!noseq){ lastsol=randseq}else{ N=N-1} }
which returns the solution as
> N [1] 12 > lastsol [1] 6 7 12 11 8 5 2 1 4 3 10 9
and so it seems there is no solution beyond N=12…
However, reading the solution in the next edition of Le Monde, the authors claim there are solutions up to 50. I wonder why the crude search above fails so suddenly, between 12 and 13! So instead I tried a recursive program that exploits the fact that subchains are also verifying the same property:
findord=function(ens){ if (length(ens)==2){ sol=ens foundsol=isprime(sum(ens))} else{ but=sample(ens,1) nut=findord(ens[ens!=but]) foundsol=FALSE sol=ens if (nut$find){ tut=nut$ord foundsol=max(isprime(but+tut[1]), isprime(but+tut[length(tut)])) sol=c(tut,but) if (isprime(but+tut[1])) sol=c(but,tut) } } list(find=foundsol,ord=sol) }
And I ran the R code for N=13,14,…
> stop=TRUE > while (stop){ + a=findord(1:N) + stop=!(a$find)}
until I reached N=20 for which the R code would not return a solution. Maybe the next step would be to store solutions in N before moving to N+1. This is just getting me too far from a mere Saturday afternoon break.
Filed under: Books, Kids, R Tagged: Le Monde, mathematical puzzle, pracma, prime numbers, R
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