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001 Overview

This document describes solving the Project Euler problem of finding the sum of all multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. It first provides a simple method of iterating from 1 to 999 and checking for divisibility by 3 or 5, adding to the running sum. It then provides a more efficient solution by calculating the sums of numbers divisible by 3, 5, and 15 separately up to 1000 using the formula for the sum of the first p integers, and subtracting the sum for 15 to avoid double counting.

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amjad_C4
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55 views

001 Overview

This document describes solving the Project Euler problem of finding the sum of all multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. It first provides a simple method of iterating from 1 to 999 and checking for divisibility by 3 or 5, adding to the running sum. It then provides a more efficient solution by calculating the sums of numbers divisible by 3, 5, and 15 separately up to 1000 using the formula for the sum of the first p integers, and subtracting the sum for 15 to avoid double counting.

Uploaded by

amjad_C4
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problem 1. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.

As you have solved this problem we do not have to explain that all numbers divisible by 3
and/or by 5 should be counted.
So the first numbers to be added would be:
3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15 and so on.

A simple way to do this is to go through all numbers from 1 to 999 and test whether they are
divisible by 3 or by 5.
This would result in code like:

target=999
sum=0
for i=1 to target do
if (i mod 3=0) or (i mod 5)=0 then sum:=sum+i
output sum

(In some programming languages the mod operator is written as %)


Simple enough you might say.
But wait a minute: if we had asked to do the same for all numbers less than 1,000,000,000 that
is going to take quite a while. Perhaps you would like to try out that first (make sure your sum
variable does not overflow).
To get a more efficient solution you could also calculate the sum of the numbers less
than1000 that are divisible by 3, plus the sum of the numbers less than1000 that are divisible
by 5. But as you have summed numbers divisible by 15 twice you would have to subtract the
sum of the numbers divisible by 15.

If we now define a function:


Function SumDivisibleBy(n)
Details to be filled in
EndFunction

Then the answer would be


SumDivisibleBy(3)+SumDivisibleBy(5)-SumDivisibleBy(15)

Let’s look at the details of our function and take as example n=3.
We would have to add:
3+6+9+12+......+999=3*(1+2+3+4+...+333)
For n=5 we would get:
5+10+15+...+995=5*(1+2+....+199)
Now note that 199=995/5 but also 999/5 rounded down to the nearest integer.
In many programming languages there exists a separate operator for that: div or \.
If we now also note that 1+2+3+...+p=½*p*(p+1) our program becomes:

target=999

Function SumDivisibleBy(n)
p=target div n
return n*(p*(p+1)) div 2
EndFunction

Output SumDivisibleBy(3)+SumDivisibleBy(5)-SumDivisibleBy(15)

copyright Project Euler,further distribution without the consent of the author(s) prohibited
Author: hk

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