Question
By counting carefully it can be seen that a rectangular grid measuring 3 by 2 contains eighteen rectangles:
Although there exists no rectangular grid that contains exactly two million rectangles, find the area of the grid with the nearest solution.
Python
#!/usr/bin/env python
from operator import mul
def pack(w, h):
return (w + 1) * (h + 1) * (w * h) / 4
def f(x, y):
return abs(pack(x, y) - 2000000)
def main():
candidates = ((x, y) for x in range(1000) for y in range(1000))
print((mul(*min((f(*pair), pair) for pair in candidates)[1])))
if __name__ == "__main__": main()$ time python3 rectangles.py
real 0m0.798s
user 0m0.798s
sys 0m0.000s