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# A Python approach to Project Euler palindromic sums

Ubaydah Abdulwasiu

### Problem overview

The palindromic number $595$ is interesting because it can be written as the sum of consecutive squares:

$62 + 72 + 82 + 92 + 102 + 112 + 122$

There are exactly eleven palindromes below one-thousand that can be written as consecutive square sums, and the sum of these palindromes is $4164$.

Note that $1 = 0^2 + 1^2$ has not been included, as this problem is concerned with the squares of positive integers.

Find the sum of all the numbers less than $10^8$ that are both palindromic and can be written as the sum of consecutive squares.

### Solution analysis

Our approach to the problem involves defining two functions.

• A function to check if a number is a palindrome.

• A function that returns the sum of a set of numbers less than the argument that is palindromic and can be written as consecutive square sums.

A palindrome is a word or number that reads the same when reversed, e.g., 1001, civic, etc.

The is_palindromic() is called in is_sum()

The is_palindromic() function checks if a number is a palindrome by converting the number to a string, slicing backward, which gives the reverse of the number, and checking if the reversed number is equal to the number.

The is_sum() function gets the sum of the palindromes that can be written as consecutive square sums, e.g., $77$ can be written as $4^2 + 5^2 + 6^2$.

is_sum() gets the sum of all numbers that can be written as consecutive square sums and checks whether it is palindromic, less than the argument, and that it isn’t a perfect square as they are excluded.

is_sum() returns the sum set of numbers that passed the given condition.

The sequence of consecutive square sums follows the pattern as shown below.

### Code

def is_palindromic(num):
a = str(num)
reverse = a[::-1]

if a == reverse:

return num

def is_sum(n):

limit = int(n ** 0.5) #The total number of sum squares

pals = set() #An empty set to add our palindromes

for i in range(1, limit):
sum2 = 0

for j in range(i, limit):
sum2 = sum2 + j ** 2
#check if sum2 is a palindrome, not a perfect square
#and not greater than the passed argument
if is_palindromic(sum2) and (sum2 ** 0.5).is_integer() == False and sum2 < n:

return sum(pals)

print(is_sum(10 ** 8))
The output passed the project euler's answer case

The code works fine but runs slower for high values of $n$; it can be improved to run faster.

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Ubaydah Abdulwasiu
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