Project Euler - Problem 4

A palindromic number reads the same both ways. The largest palindrome made from the product of two 2-digit numbers is 9009 = 91 X 99.

Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers.

通常解法：

def isPalindrome(n):
    s = str(n)
    return s == s[::-1]

def findLargestPalindrome():
    largestPalindrome = 0
    for a in range(100, 1000):
        for b in range(100, 1000):
            if isPalindrome(a*b) and a*b > largestPalindrome:
                largestPalindrome = a*b
    return largestPalindrome

分析：
1、每个palindromic数可以表示为：
P=100000x+10000y+1000z+100z+10y+x
P=100001x+10010y+1100z
P=11(9091x+910y+100z)
且P=ab，由每个数可以分解为N个素数的乘积。可知，a和b中至少有一个可以被11整除。

2、a*b和b*a的结果可以只计算一次。

3、从大往小计算，可以更早的发现结果。

改进算法：

def findLargestPalindrome():
    largestPalindrome = 0
    a = 999
    while a >= 100:
        if not a % 11:
            b = 999
            db = 1
        else:
            b = 990 # 990是小于1000又能够被11整除的最大数
            db = 11
        while b >= a:
            if a * b <= largestPalindrome:
                break # a和b都是从大到小遍历，相乘的结果不断变小。
            if isPalindrome(a*b):
                largestPalindrome = a*b
            b -= db
        a -= 1
    return largestPalindrome