Project Euler problem 56

Problem 56:

A googol (10¹⁰⁰) is a massive number: one followed by one-hundred zeros; 100¹⁰⁰ is almost unimaginably large: one followed by two-hundred zeros. Despite their size, the sum of the digits in each number is only 1.

Considering natural numbers of the form, a^b, where a, b < 100, what is the maximum digital sum?

So, let’s do nested loops, both going 1 to 100. Inside the inner loop, calculate a^b (or i^j in this case). Then loop through the digits of that value, adding them up. Keep track of which is the largest value this produces.

Running time about 3 seconds in Python:

import time
tStart = time.time()

maxsum = 0

for i in range(100):
    for j in range(100):
        num = i ** j
        total = 0

        for k in str(num):
            total += int(k)

        if total > maxsum:
            maxsum = total

print(maxsum)
print("time:" + str(time.time() - tStart))