write a number as sum of a consecutive primes

Question

How to check if n can be partitioned to sum of a sequence of consecutive prime numbers.

For example, 12 is equal to 5+7 which 5 and 7 are consecutive primes, but 20 is equal to 3+17 which 3 and 17 are not consecutive.

Note that, repetition is not allowed.

My idea is to find and list all primes below n, then use 2 loops to sum all primes. The first 2 numbers, second 2 numbers, third 2 numbers etc. and then first 3 numbers, second 3 numbers and so far. But it takes lot of time and memory.

Answer 1

Realize that a consecutive list of primes is defined only by two pieces of information, the starting and the ending prime number. You just have to find these two numbers.

I assume that you have all the primes at your disposal, sorted in the array called primes. Keep three variables in memory: sum which initially is 2 (the smallest prime), first_index and last_index which are initially 0 (index of the smallest prime in array primes).

Now you have to "tweak" these two indices, and "travel" the array along the way in the loop:

If sum == n then finish. You have found your sequence of primes.

If sum < n then enlarge the list by adding next available prime. Increment last_index by one, and then increment sum by the value of new prime, which is primes[last_index]. Repeat the loop. But if primes[last_index] is larger than n then there is no solution, and you must finish.

If sum > n then reduce the list by removing the smallest prime from the list. Decrement sum by that value, which is primes[first_index], and then increment first_index by one. Repeat the loop.

Answer 2

Dialecticus's algorithm is the classic O(m)-time, O(1)-space way to solve this type of problem (here I'll use m to represent the number of prime numbers less than n). It doesn't depend on any mysterious properties of prime numbers. (Interestingly, for the particular case of prime numbers, AlexAlvarez's algorithm is also linear time!) Dialecticus gives a clear and correct description, but seems at a loss to explain why it is correct, so I'll try to do this here. I really think it's valuable to take the time to understand this particular algorithm's proof of correctness: although I had to read a number of explanations before it finally "sank in", it was a real "Aha!" moment when it did! :) (Also, problems that can be efficiently solved in the same manner crop up quite a lot.)

The candidate solutions this algorithm tries can be represented as number ranges (i, j), where i and j are just the indexes of the first and last prime number in a list of prime numbers. The algorithm gets its efficiency by ruling out (that is, not considering) sets of number ranges in two different ways. To prove that it always gives the right answer, we need to show that it never rules out the only range with the right sum. To that end, it suffices to prove that it never rules out the first (leftmost) range with the right sum, which is what we'll do here.

The first rule it applies is that whenever we find a range (i, j) with sum(i, j) > n, we rule out all ranges (i, k) having k > j. It's easy to see why this is justified: the sum can only get bigger as we add more terms, and we have determined that it's already too big.

The second, trickier rule, crucial to the linear time complexity, is that whenever we advance the starting point of a range (i, j) from i to i+1, instead of "starting again" from (i+1, i+1), we start from (i+1, j) -- that is, we avoid considering (i+1, k) for all i+1 <= k < j. Why is it OK to do this? (To put the question the other way: Couldn't it be that doing this causes us to skip over some range with the right sum?)

[EDIT: The original version of the next paragraph glossed over a subtlety: we might have advanced the range end point to j on any previous step.]

To see that it never skips a valid range, we need to think about the range (i, j-1). For the algorithm to advance the starting point of the current range, so that it changes from (i, j) to (i+1, j), it must have been that sum(i, j) > n; and as we will see, to get to a program state in which the range (i, j) is being considered in the first place, it must have been that sum(i, j-1) < n. That second claim is subtle, because there are two different ways to arrive in such a program state: either we just incremented the end point, meaning that the previous range was (i, j-1) and this range was found to be too small (in which case our desired property sum(i, j-1) < n obviously holds); or we just incremented the start point after considering (i-1, j) and finding it to be too large (in which case it's not obvious that the property still holds).

What we do know, however, is that regardless of whether the end point was increased from j-1 to j on the previous step, it was definitely increased at some time before the current step -- so let's call the range that triggered this end point increase (k, j-1). Clearly sum(k, j-1) < n, since this was (by definition) the range that caused us to increase the end point from j-1 to j; and just as clearly k <= i, since we only process ranges in increasing order of their start points. Since i >= k, sum(i, j-1) is just the same as sum(k, j-1) but with zero or more terms removed from the left end, and all of these terms are positive, so it must be that sum(i, j-1) <= sum(k, j-1) < n.

So we have established that whenever we increase i to i+1, we know that sum(i, j-1) < n. To finish the analysis of this rule, what we (again) need to make use of is that dropping terms from either end of this sum can't make it any bigger. Removing the first term leaves us with sum(i+1, j-1) <= sum(i, j-1) < n. Starting from that sum and successively removing terms from the other end leaves us with sum(i+1, j-2), sum(i+1, j-3), ..., sum(i+1, i+1), all of which we know must be less than n -- that is, none of the ranges corresponding to these sums can be valid solutions. Therefore we can safely avoid considering them in the first place, and that's exactly what the algorithm does.

One final potential stumbling block is that it might seem that, since we are advancing two loop indexes, the time complexity should be O(m^2). But notice that every time through the loop body, we advance one of the indexes (i or j) by one, and we never move either of them backwards, so if we are still running after 2m loop iterations we must have i + j = 2m. Since neither index can ever exceed m, the only way for this to hold is if i = j = m, which means that we have reached the end: i.e. we are guaranteed to terminate after at most 2m iterations.