Question

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:

• Dimensions of the grid = (Int32.MaxValue x Int32.MaxValue).
• Value at any given (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?

• Using sets won’t work since the factors don’t exist in memory.
• Is there a creative way to factor knowing that the number in question will always be a power of e?

Answer 1

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);
  }
}