November 20, 2013

Pentagonal Numbers in Haskell


As part of my refresh on algorithms, data structures and programming, I found this interesting mathematic problem:

Pentagonal numbers are generated by the formula, Pn=n(3n−1)/2. The first ten pentagonal numbers are:
1, 5, 12, 22, 35, 51, 70, 92, 117, 145, ...
It can be seen that P4 + P7 = 22 + 70 = 92 = P8. However, their difference, 70 − 22 = 48, is not pentagonal.
Find the pair of pentagonal numbers, Pj and Pk, for which their sum and difference are pentagonal and D = |Pk − Pj| is minimised; what is the value of D?

Then, I decided to elaborate a program in Haskell that would find the number D. Of course, you can find the code in Github.

No comments:

Post a Comment