Project Euler Problem 039
Statement
If p is the perimeter of a right angle triangle with integral length sides, {a,b,c}, there are exactly three solutions for p = 120.
{20,48,52}, {24,45,51}, {30,40,50}
For which value of p ≤ 1000, is the number of solutions maximised?
Solution
A brute-force solution solves it in less than a minute in Python:
def find_combinations_of_perimeter(per): result = 0 a = 1 b = 1 c = 1 for a in range(1, per // 2): for b in range(a, per // 2): c = per - b - a if (a ** 2 + b ** 2) == c ** 2: result += 1 return result if __name__ == '__main__': max_count = 0 for i in range(12, 1000): c = find_combinations_of_perimeter(i) if c > max_count: max_count = c result = i print("The result is:", result)
The Python file is available for download here.