Continued fraction for pi in Python - python

I'm trying to approximate pi using continued fraction.
I'm using this formula.
After many hours, I ended up here.
for i in range(1,15,1):
e = ((2*i - 1) ** 2)
b = (e / (6 + ((2*(i+1) - 1) ** 2)))
print(3+b)
`
But my output is not so great...

Your approach is incorrect. If you substitute some example values in place of i you will notice that you completely disregard everything other than i-th and i+1th part of this fraction. You need to make sure that your loop takes into account all the higher levels as well as the new one you are calculating. I think the easiest way to code the solution is by using recursion:
def inf_pi(its, ctr = 1):
if its == 0:
return 0
else:
x = ((2*ctr)-1)**2 / (6 + inf_pi(its - 1, ctr + 1))
return x + (3 if ctr == 1 else 0)
print(inf_pi(10))
If you need an iterative approach, you have to consider 2 things - first of all, you can only calculate this with finite precision, and you need to replace the uncalculated remainder with some value. Second problem is that you are trying to calculate this from outermost fraction, but you don't know what the value of the "infinite" fraction is. If you reverse the order, starting form the innermost fraction, after replacing part outside of wanted precision with a constant, you can keep calculating a value for each step all the way up to the outer fraction.
def it_pi(its):
pi = 0
for i in range(its, 0, -1):
pi = (((2*i)-1)**2) / (6 + pi)
return 3 + pi

Related

Python: for loop taking too long

I'm trying to write a code which solves the reduced fractions problem seen online. For small values of n and d I get an answer out, however when trying to solve for large values of n and d, the for loop takes so long that I get a memory error (after waiting for the code to run for about an hour).
"By listing the set of reduced proper fractions for d ≤ 1,000,000 in ascending order of size..."
Is there a way I can check all possible fractions for large values of n without using a lengthy for loop?
fraction_list = []
for d in range(1000000):
for n in range(1000000):
if n<d and n/d ==0 :
frac = float(n) / float(d)
#print(frac)
fraction_list.append(frac)
index_num = (fraction_list.index(float(2.0/7.0)))
sorted(fraction_list, key=float)
print(fraction_list[index_num])
print("the fraction which is to the left is" + fraction_list[index_num -1])
I guess there may be more efficient methods than what I present here, but at least you can avoid the double loop when you realise that you don't need to calculate all factors with both numerator and denominator in the range of 0..1000000.
You could just do that loop on the denominator (starting at 1, not 0) only, and then increment the numerator (starting at 0) until it goes beyond the given fraction. At that moment decrement that numerator once, so it represents a potential candidate solution. Then in the next iteration -- when the denominator is one greater -- it is not necessary to reset the numerator to 0 again, it can continue where it left, as it is certain that the new fraction will be less than the given fraction: that is where you really gain time.
This means you can use a linear method instead of quadratic:
def get_prev_fraction(num, denom, limit = 1000000):
bestnum = 0
bestdenom = 1
a = 0
for b in range(1,limit+1):
while a*denom < b*num:
a += 1
a -= 1
if a*bestdenom > b*bestnum:
bestnum, bestdenom = a, b
return bestnum, bestdenom
num, denom = get_prev_fraction(2, 7)
print("the fraction which is to the left of {}/{}={} is {}/{}={}".format(2, 7, 2.0/7, num, denom, num/denom))
This outputs:
the fraction which is to the left of 2/7=0.2857142857142857 is 285713/999996=0.28571414285657143
Note that the quote mentions d ≤ 1,000,000, so you need to do range(1000001) to include that limit.

Comparing float variables precisely?

I have a code looking like this:
for i in range (1, 256):
if ((((i-1) * (1 / float(256))) <= proba) and (proba <= (i * (1 / float(256))))):
problist[i] += 1
With proba being a float between 0 and 1 (mostly 0.625 or 0.5).
I want to add proba which is calculated before to a specific interval. Problem is that python seems to assign one value to more than one interval due to rounding errors.
Is there another way to compare these two float numbers being more precise?
Has nothing to do with rounding errors. There aren't any. But if you have intervals [0.49609375, 0.5] and [0.5, 0.50390625], then 0.5 truly is in both of them. Use half-open intervals instead, i.e., change one of those <= to <.
Btw, it would be simpler and faster to simply calculate the interval number by multiplying with 256.
problist[min(int(proba * 256) + 1, 256)] += 1

Evaluating polynomials in modulo arithmetic

I need to repeatedly evaluate a polynomial of the form
f(x)=c(0)+c(1)*x+...+c(k-1)*x^(k-1) mod p
where k is an integer, p is a large prime number and c(0),...,c(p) are between 1 and p.
For my applications, k=10, p should be greater than 1000.
I would prefer to do this in Python and as fast as possible. I don't know enough about modulo arithmetic in Python to implement this efficiently (e.g. how to exploit that we can use Mersenne primes p=2^q-1 in which case about should use that multiplication is a register shift, avoid trouble by adding integers over different orders of magnitude,...).
Motivation: k-independent hashing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-independent_hashing. This seems to a very popular academic subject but I was not able to find any implementations for k>2.
In general, you can compute the value of a polynomial using the following construction:
def value(poly, x):
"""Evaluates a polynomial POLY for a given x.
The polynomial is expressed as a list of coefficients, with
the coefficient for x ** N at poly[N].
This means that x ** 2 + 2*x + 3 is expressed as [3, 2, 1].
"""
v = 0
# Bit messy, but we're basically generating the indexes of
# our polynomial coefficients from highest to lowest
for coeff in reverse(poly):
v = v * x + coeff
return v
To evaluate this modulo a value, we can simply change the inner loop to v = v * x + poly[ix] % p (and pass our modulus as the parameter p).
We can show that the example polynom (x^2 + 2x + 3) is computed correctly by unwinding the loop and see that what we have is (((1) * x + 2) * x + 3) (each parenthesis level is one iteration through the loop), this can be simplified to 1 * x * x + 2 * x + 3, which is clearly the expected polynomial.
By using this, we should never end up with an intermediate value larger than p * x.

Python Pi approximation

So I have to approximate Pi with following way: 4*(1-1/3+1/5-1/7+1/9-...). Also it should be based on number of iterations. So the function should look like this:
>>> piApprox(1)
4.0
>>> piApprox(10)
3.04183961893
>>> piApprox(300)
3.13825932952
But it works like this:
>>> piApprox(1)
4.0
>>> piApprox(10)
2.8571428571428577
>>> piApprox(300)
2.673322240709928
What am I doing wrong? Here is the code:
def piApprox(num):
pi=4.0
k=1.0
est=1.0
while 1<num:
k+=2
est=est-(1/k)+1/(k+2)
num=num-1
return pi*est
This is what you're computing:
4*(1-1/3+1/5-1/5+1/7-1/7+1/9...)
You can fix it just by adding a k += 2 at the end of your loop:
def piApprox(num):
pi=4.0
k=1.0
est=1.0
while 1<num:
k+=2
est=est-(1/k)+1/(k+2)
num=num-1
k+=2
return pi*est
Also the way you're counting your iterations is wrong since you're adding two elements at the time.
This is a cleaner version that returns the output that you expect for 10 and 300 iterations:
def approximate_pi(rank):
value = 0
for k in xrange(1, 2*rank+1, 2):
sign = -(k % 4 - 2)
value += float(sign) / k
return 4 * value
Here is the same code but more compact:
def approximate_pi(rank):
return 4 * sum(-float(k%4 - 2) / k for k in xrange(1, 2*rank+1, 2))
Important edit:
whoever expects this approximation to yield PI -- quote from Wikipedia:
It converges quite slowly, though – after 500,000 terms, it produces
only five correct decimal digits of π
Original answer:
This is an educational example. You try to use a shortcut and attempt to implement the "oscillating" sign of the summands by handling two steps for k in the same iteration. However, you adjust k only by one step per iteration.
Usually, in math at least, an oscillating sign is achieved with (-1)**i. So, I have chosen this for a more readable implementation:
def pi_approx(num_iterations):
k = 3.0
s = 1.0
for i in range(num_iterations):
s = s-((1/k) * (-1)**i)
k += 2
return 4 * s
As you can see, I have changed your approach a bit, to improve readability. There is no need for you to check for num in a while loop, and there is no particular need for your pi variable. Your est actually is a sum that grows step by step, so why not call it s ("sum" is a built-in keyword in Python). Just multiply the sum with 4 in the end, according to your formula.
Test:
>>> pi_approx(100)
3.1514934010709914
The convergence, however, is not especially good:
>>> pi_approx(100) - math.pi
0.009900747481198291
Your expected output is flaky somehow, because your piApprox(300) (should be 3.13825932952, according to your) is too far away from PI. How did you come up with that? Is that possibly affected by an accumulated numerical error?
Edit
I would not trust the book too much in regard of what the function should return after 10 and 300 iterations. The intermediate result, after 10 steps, should be rather free of numerical errors, indeed. There, it actually makes a difference whether you take two steps of k at the same time or not. So this most likely is the difference between my pi_approx(10) and the books'. For 300 iterations, numerical error might have severely affected the result in the book. If this is an old book, and they have implemented their example in C, possibly using single precision, then a significant portion of the result may be due to accumulation of numerical error (note: this is a prime example for how bad you can be affected by numerical errors: a repeated sum of small and large values, it does not get worse!).
What counts is that you have looked at the math (the formula for PI), and you have implemented a working Python version of approximating that formula. That was the learning goal of the book, so go ahead and tackle the next problem :-).
def piApprox(num):
pi=4.0
k=3.0
est=1.0
while 1<num:
est=est-(1/k)+1/(k+2)
num=num-1
k+=4
return pi*est
Also for real task use math.pi
Here is a slightly simpler version:
def pi_approx(num_terms):
sign = 1. # +1. or -1.
pi_by_4 = 1. # first term
for div in range(3, 2 * num_terms, 2): # 3, 5, 7, ...
sign = -sign # flip sign
pi_by_4 += sign / div # add next term
return 4. * pi_by_4
which gives
>>> for n in [1, 10, 300, 1000, 3000]:
... print(pi_approx(n))
4.0
3.0418396189294032
3.1382593295155914
3.140592653839794
3.1412593202657186
While all of these answers are perfectly good approximations, if you are using the Madhava-Leibniz Series than you should arrive at ,"an approximation of π correct to 11 decimal places as 3.14159265359" within in first 21 terms according to this website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_%CF%80
Therefore, a more accurate solution could be any variation of this:
import math
def estimate_pi(terms):
ans = 0.0
for k in range(terms):
ans += (-1.0/3.0)**k/(2.0*k+1.0)
return math.sqrt(12)*ans
print(estimate_pi(21))
Output: 3.141592653595635

Project Euler #25: Keep getting Overflow error (result to large) - is it to do with calculating fibonacci number?

I'm working on solving the Project Euler problem 25:
What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000
digits?
My piece of code works for smaller digits, but when I try a 1000 digits, i get the error:
OverflowError: (34, 'Result too large')
I'm thinking it may be on how I compute the fibonacci numbers, but i've tried several different methods, yet i get the same error.
Here's my code:
'''
What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits
'''
def fibonacci(n):
phi = (1 + pow(5, 0.5))/2 #Golden Ratio
return int((pow(phi, n) - pow(-phi, -n))/pow(5, 0.5)) #Formula: http://bit.ly/qDumIg
n = 0
while len(str(fibonacci(n))) < 1000:
n += 1
print n
Do you know what may the cause of this problem and how i could alter my code avoid this problem?
Thanks in advance.
The problem here is that only integers in Python have unlimited length, floating point values are still calculated using normal IEEE types which has a maximum precision.
As such, since you're using an approximation, using floating point calculations, you will get that problem eventually.
Instead, try calculating the Fibonacci sequence the normal way, one number (of the sequence) at a time, until you get to 1000 digits.
ie. calculate 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.
By "normal way" I mean this:
/ 1 , n < 3
Fib(n) = |
\ Fib(n-2) + Fib(n-1) , n >= 3
Note that the "obvious" approach given the above formulas is wrong for this particular problem, so I'll post the code for the wrong approach just to make sure you don't waste time on that:
def fib(n):
if n <= 3:
return 1
else:
return fib(n-2) + fib(n-1)
n = 1
while True:
f = fib(n)
if len(str(f)) >= 1000:
print("#%d: %d" % (n, f))
exit()
n += 1
On my machine, the above code starts going really slow at around the 30th fibonacci number, which is still only 6 digits long.
I modified the above recursive approach to output the number of calls to the fib function for each number, and here are some values:
#1: 1
#10: 67
#20: 8361
#30: 1028457
#40: 126491971
I can reveal that the first Fibonacci number with 1000 digits or more is the 4782th number in the sequence (unless I miscalculated), and so the number of calls to the fib function in a recursive approach will be this number:
1322674645678488041058897524122997677251644370815418243017081997189365809170617080397240798694660940801306561333081985620826547131665853835988797427277436460008943552826302292637818371178869541946923675172160637882073812751617637975578859252434733232523159781720738111111789465039097802080315208597093485915332193691618926042255999185137115272769380924184682248184802491822233335279409301171526953109189313629293841597087510083986945111011402314286581478579689377521790151499066261906574161869200410684653808796432685809284286820053164879192557959922333112075826828349513158137604336674826721837135875890203904247933489561158950800113876836884059588285713810502973052057892127879455668391150708346800909439629659013173202984026200937561704281672042219641720514989818775239313026728787980474579564685426847905299010548673623281580547481750413205269166454195584292461766536845931986460985315260676689935535552432994592033224633385680958613360375475217820675316245314150525244440638913595353267694721961
And that is just for the 4782th number. The actual value is the sum of all those values for all the fibonacci numbers from 1 up to 4782. There is no way this will ever complete.
In fact, if we would give the code 1 year of running time (simplified as 365 days), and assuming that the machine could make 10.000.000.000 calls every second, the algorithm would get as far as to the 83rd number, which is still only 18 digits long.
Actually, althought the advice given above to avoid floating-point numbers is generally good advice for Project Euler problems, in this case it is incorrect. Fibonacci numbers can be computed by the formula F_n = phi^n / sqrt(5), so that the first fibonacci number greater than a thousand digits can be computed as 10^999 < phi^n / sqrt(5). Taking the logarithm to base ten of both sides -- recall that sqrt(5) is the same as 5^(1/2) -- gives 999 < n log_10(phi) - 1/2 log_10(5), and solving for n gives (999 + 1/2 log_10(5)) / log_10(phi) < n. The left-hand side of that equation evaluates to 4781.85927, so the smallest n that gives a thousand digits is 4782.
You can use the sliding window trick to compute the terms of the Fibonacci sequence iteratively, rather than using the closed form (or doing it recursively as it's normally defined).
The Python version for finding fib(n) is as follows:
def fib(n):
a = 1
b = 1
for i in range(2, n):
b = a + b
a = b - a
return b
This works when F(1) is defined as 1, as it is in Project Euler 25.
I won't give the exact solution to the problem here, but the code above can be reworked so it keeps track of n until a sentry value (10**999) is reached.
An iterative solution such as this one has no trouble executing. I get the answer in less than a second.
def fibonacci():
current = 0
previous = 1
while True:
temp = current
current = current + previous
previous = temp
yield current
def main():
for index, element in enumerate(fibonacci()):
if len(str(element)) >= 1000:
answer = index + 1 #starts from 0
break
print(answer)
import math as m
import time
start = time.time()
fib0 = 0
fib1 = 1
n = 0
k = 0
count = 1
while k<1000 :
n = fib0 + fib1
k = int(m.log10(n))+1
fib0 = fib1
fib1 = n
count += 1
print n
print count
print time.time()-start
takes 0.005388 s on my pc. did nothing fancy just followed simple code.
Iteration will always be better. Recursion was taking to long for me as well.
Also used a math function for calculating the number of digits in a number instead of taking the number in a list and iterating through it. Saves a lot of time
Here is my very simple solution
list = [1,1,2]
for i in range(2,5000):
if len(str(list[i]+list[i-1])) == 1000:
print (i + 2)
break
else:
list.append(list[i]+list[i-1])
This is sort of a "rogue" way of doing it, but if you change the 1000 to any number except one, it gets it right.
You can use the datatype Decimal. This is a little bit slower but you will be able to have arbitrary precision.
So your code:
'''
What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits
'''
from Decimal import *
def fibonacci(n):
phi = (Decimal(1) + pow(Decimal(5), Decimal(0.5))) / 2 #Golden Ratio
return int((pow(phi, Decimal(n))) - pow(-phi, Decimal(-n)))/pow(Decimal(5), Decimal(0.5)))
n = 0
while len(str(fibonacci(n))) < 1000:
n += 1
print n

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