I am trying to find certain coordinates of interest within a very large virtual grid. This grid does not actually exist in memory since the dimensions are huge. For the sake of this question, let's assume those dimensions to be (Width x Height) = (Int32.MaxValue x Int32.MaxValue)
.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30
4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
6 12 18 24 30 36 42 48 54 60
7 14 21 28 35 42 49 56 63 70
8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 72 80
9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Known data about grid:
(Int32.MaxValue x Int32.MaxValue)
.(x, y)
coordinate = Product of X and Y = (x * y)
.Given the above large set of finite numbers, I need to calculate a set of coordinates whose value (x * y)
is a power of e
. Let's say e
is 2 in this case.
Since looping through the grid is not an option, I thought about looping through:
int n = 0;
long r = 0;
List<long> powers = new List<long>();
while (r < (Int32.MaxValue * Int32.MaxValue))
{
r = Math.Pow(e, n++);
powers.Add(r);
}
This gives us a unique set of powers. I now need to find out at what coordinates each power exists. Let's take 2^3=8
. As shown in the grid above, 8 exists in 4 coordinates: (8,1), (4,2), (2,4) & (1, 8)
.
Clearly the problem here is finding multiple factors of the number 8 but this would become impractical for larger numbers. Is there another way to achieve this and am I missing something?
e
?Another solution, not as sophisticated as the idea from Commodore63, but therefore maybe a little bit simpler (no need to do a prime factorization and calculating all proper subsets):
const int MaxX = 50;
const int MaxY = 50;
const int b = 6;
var maxExponent = (int)Math.Log((long)MaxX * MaxY, b);
var result = new List<Tuple<int, int>>[maxExponent + 1];
for (var i = 0; i < result.Length; ++i)
result[i] = new List<Tuple<int, int>>();
// Add the trivial case
result[0].Add(Tuple.Create(1, 1));
// Add all (x,y) with x*y = b
for (var factor = 1; factor <= (int)Math.Sqrt(b); ++factor)
if (b % factor == 0)
result[1].Add(Tuple.Create(factor, b / factor));
// Now handle the rest, meaning x > b, y <= x, x != 1, y != 1
for (var x = b; x <= MaxX; ++x) {
if (x % b != 0)
continue;
// Get the max exponent for b in x and the remaining factor
int exp = 1;
int lastFactor = x / b;
while (lastFactor >= b && lastFactor % b == 0) {
++exp;
lastFactor = lastFactor / b;
}
if (lastFactor > 1) {
// Find 1 < y < b with x*y yielding a power of b
for (var y = 2; y < b; ++y)
if (lastFactor * y == b)
result[exp + 1].Add(Tuple.Create(x, y));
} else {
// lastFactor == 1 meaning that x is a power of b
// that means that y has to be a power of b (with y <= x)
for (var k = 1; k <= exp; ++k)
result[exp + k].Add(Tuple.Create(x, (int)Math.Pow(b, k)));
}
}
// Output the result
for (var i = 0; i < result.Length; ++i) {
Console.WriteLine("Exponent {0} - Power {1}:", i, Math.Pow(b, i));
foreach (var pair in result[i]) {
Console.WriteLine(" {0}", pair);
//if (pair.Item1 != pair.Item2)
// Console.WriteLine(" ({0}, {1})", pair.Item2, pair.Item1);
}
}