# Euler Problem 15: Pathways Through a Lattice

March 9, 2017
By

(This article was first published on The Devil is in the Data, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

Euler Problem 15 analyses taxicab geometry. This system replaces the usual distance function with the sum of the absolute differences of their Cartesian coordinates. In other words, the distance a taxi would travel in a grid plan. The fifteenth Euler problem asks to determine the number of possible routes a taxi can take in a city of a certain size.

## Euler Problem 15 Definition

Starting in the top left corner of a 2×2 grid, and only being able to move to the right and down, there are exactly 6 routes to the bottom right corner. How many possible routes are there through a 20×20 grid?

## Solution

The defined lattice is one larger than the number of squares. Along the edges of the matrix, only one pathway is possible: straight to the right or down. We can calculate the number of possible pathways for the remaining number by adding the number to the right and below the point.

$p_{i,j}=p_{i,j{+1}}+p_{{i+1},j}$

For the two by two lattice the solution space is:

6  3  1
3  2  1
1  1  0

The total number of pathways from the upper left corner to the lower right corner is thus 6. This logic can now be applied to a grid of any arbitrary size using the following code.

The code defines the lattice and initiates the boundary conditions. The bottom row and the right column are filled with 1 as there is only one solution from these points. The code then calculates the pathways by working backwards through the matrix. The final solution is the number is the first cell.

```# Define lattice
nLattice <- 20
lattice = matrix(ncol=nLattice + 1, nrow=nLattice + 1)

# Boundary conditions
lattice[nLattice + 1,-(nLattice + 1)] <- 1
lattice[-(nLattice + 1), nLattice + 1] <- 1

# Calculate Pathways
for (i in nLattice:1) {
for (j in nLattice:1) {
lattice[i,j] <- lattice[i+1, j] + lattice[i, j+1]
}
}

```

## Taxicab Geometry

The post Euler Problem 15: Pathways Through a Lattice appeared first on The Devil is in the Data.

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