On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:01:33PM +0000, Alan Gauld wrote: > Just to be clear this has nothing to do with Python. It doesn't matter > what programming language you choose there is not a PC on Earth that can > do what you want using the technique you are using in 16 seconds.
I don't believe that you could do it with the fastest supercomputer on earth. If you have to test 10**18 numbers in 16/10**5 seconds, that gives you less than 0.0000000000002 nanoseconds per test. This isn't a question of tweaking the code to make it run faster, you need a fundamentally different approach to the problem, as Alan says. Either that, or we have completely misunderstood the constraints of the puzzle. > >Can i work around that way in python or should i come up with a new > >algorithm? > > You definitely need a fundamentally different algorithm. I expect that this is some question from one of those annoying websites that offer extremely advanced mathematics puzzles disguised as a programming challenge. (Well I find them annoying. The answer almost always turns out to be something which took a genius of the level of Euler or Gauss to discover, and they expect you to come up with the answer on your own.) -- Steven _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
