# Project Euler #58: Primes along the diagonals of a square spiral

I am working on Project Euler Problem 58:

Starting with 1 and spiralling anticlockwise in the following way, a square spiral with side length 7 is formed.

37 36 35 34 33 32 31
38 17 16 15 14 13 30
39 18  5  4  3 12 29
40 19  6  1  2 11 28
41 20  7  8  9 10 27
42 21 22 23 24 25 26
43 44 45 46 47 48 49


It is interesting to note that the odd squares lie along the bottom right diagonal, but what is more interesting is that 8 out of the 13 numbers lying along both diagonals are prime; that is, a ratio of 8/13 ≈ 62%.

If one complete new layer is wrapped around the spiral above, a square spiral with side length 9 will be formed. If this process is continued, what is the side length of the square spiral for which the ratio of primes along both diagonals first falls below 10%?

My code gives the correct answer, but it takes a very long time to do it, even while using Pypy, a JIT compiler.

I would like to know some good ways to increase my efficiency in this problem.

import random
def m_r(n):
d = n - 1
s = 0
while d % 2 == 0:
d >>= 1
s += 1
for repeat in range(20):
a = 0
while a == 0:
a = random.randrange(n)
if not miller_rabin_pass(a, s, d, n):
return False
return True

def miller_rabin_pass(a, s, d, n):
a_to_power = pow(a, d, n)
if a_to_power == 1:
return True
for i in range(s-1):
if a_to_power == n - 1:
return True
a_to_power = (a_to_power * a_to_power) % n
return a_to_power == n - 1

def eraSieve(n):
sieve=[True]*(n+1)
sieve[:2] = [False, False]
sqrt = int(n**.5)+1
for x in xrange(2, sqrt):
if sieve[x]:
sieve[2*x::x]=[False]*(n/x-1)
return sieve

def diagonalNum(n): # n is the number of row
increment = 2
getDiaNum = 1
limit = (n-1)/2
sideLen = 1.0
c = 0.0
for i in xrange(1, limit + 1):
count = 1
while count <= 4:
getDiaNum += increment
if m_r(getDiaNum):
c += 1
count += 1
increment += 2
sideLen += 4
return c / sideLen

for x in xrange(1, 100000):
ratio = diagonalNum(x)
print x
if ratio < 0.10:
break
print x

• Each time you call diagonalNum from the main loop, it starts again from 1, repeating all the work done on the previous call (and the call before that, and so on). Why not maintain a running count? Sep 27 '16 at 19:45
• @GarethRees What do you mean by running count? Sep 27 '16 at 20:04
• @GarethRees That looks like it should be an answer. Sep 27 '16 at 20:07

It is interesting to see that the corners of a square of size $s$ have values: $s^2-3s+3$, $s^2-2s+2$, $s^2-s+1$, $s^2$. (Also $s^2$ is not a prime ;-))