Problem Statement
I have two different patterns to represent whole numbers using binary digits as follows:
First (the standard decimal to binary conversion):
0 -> 000
1 -> 001
2 -> 010
3 -> 011
4 -> 100
5 -> 101
6 -> 110
7 -> 111
Second:
0 -> 0000
1 -> 0001
2 -> 0010
3 -> 0100
4 -> 1000
5 -> 0011
6 -> 0101
7 -> 1001
8 -> 0110
9 -> 1010
10 -> 1100
11 -> 0111
12 -> 1011
13 -> 1101
14 -> 1110
15 -> 1111
Explaination: First, take flip one bit each, highest priority to the least significant bit. Then in second iteration, keep first bit flipped and then flip the rest bits in order as before. In the third iteration, the least significant bit is unset, and then second significant bit set and then pattern continued.
But now, let's say I want to combine the first and second pattern into one single pattern where some parts are defined by the first patten while the others are defined by the second pattern. For example:
(First pattern, most 3 significant digits)(Second pattern, least 3 significant digits)
0 -> 000000
1 -> 000001
2 -> 000010
3 -> 000100
4 -> 000011
5 -> 000101
6 -> 000110
7 -> 000111
8 -> 001000
9 -> 001001
10 -> 001010
11 -> 001100
12 -> 001011
13 -> 001101
14 -> 001110
15 -> 001111
16 -> 010000
17 -> 010001
...
010111
011000
...
The goal:
Input which tells which group of bits have which of these 2 patterns (no. of bits can be as long as we want and the pattern repetition can keep shifting between groups of bits in this set infinitely); a whole number.
Output which converts the whole number to the corresponding binary representation based on the input pattern. E.g. 12 -> 001011
Where I am stuck:
The binary conversion is straight forward. The second pattern, I'm not really sure how to make. Even if I can convert the whole number to the second pattern binary representation, how could I combine the both types to find the correct binary equivalent for my input number? Since there is a pattern here, I'm sure there must be an elegant mathematical representation for this!
What is my use case?
I'm writing a code for an application where I want to create a search pattern similar to this binary representation, based on a similar type of input.
Assuming you have calculated first pattern and second pattern for a number.
Convert them back to "normal" decimal and then left shift firstNumber by 3 firstPatterNo << 3 and then do OR of 2 numbers firstPatterNo | secondPatterNo.
firstPatterNo = 3 // 011 (normal decimal representations)
secondPatternNo = 4 // 100 (normal decimal representations)
combined = (firstPatterNo << 3) | secondPatternNo
// Convert combined to normal binary representation
BTW whats the logic behind second pattern ? I am not able to figure out.
Related
I have a hash table that look like this:
0
1 -> 1101 -> 1222 -> 1343 \\ 3 key comparison
2
3 -> 2973 -> 2588 \\ 2 key comparison
4
How many key comparisons are there?
The given answer is 1 + 2 + 1 = 4 but shouldn't it be 3 + 2 = 5?
The given answer is correct. One possible sequence:
At first, you have an empty list -> then add 1101 -> no comparison needed.
Add 1222 -> go to the 1 list, compared it with 1101 -> add it to the end of the list -> 1 comparison.
Add 1343 -> go to the 1 list, compared it with 1101, 1222 -> add it to the end of the list -> 2 comparisons.
Add 2973 -> no comparison,
Add 2588 -> go to 3 list, compared it with 2973 -> 1 comparison.
So, in total, the number of comparison is 0 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 1
Don't know where do you get the 3 + 2 = 5 from? total number of elements?
I'm trying to solve this problem. Now, I was able to get a recursive solution:
If DP[n] gives the number of beautiful substrings (defined in problem) ending at the nth character of the string, then to find DP[n+1], we scan the input string backward from the (n+1)th character until we find an ith character such that the substring beginning at the ith character and ending at the (n+1)th character is beautiful. If no such i can be found, DP[n+1] = 0.
If such a string is found then, DP[n+1] = 1 + DP[i-1].
The trouble is, this solution gives a timeout on one testcase. I suspect it is the scanning backward part that is problematic. The overall time complexity for my solution seems to be O(N^2). The size of the input data seems to indicate that the problem expects an O(NlogN) solution.
You don't really need dynamic programming for this; you can do it by iterating over the string once and, after each character, storing the state (the relative number of a's, b's and c's that were encountered so far) in a dictionary. This dictionary has maximum size N+1, so the overall time complexity is O(N).
If you find that at a certain point in the string there are e.g. 5 more a's than b's and 7 more c's than b's, and you find the same situation at another point in the string, then you know that the substring between those two points contains an equal number of a's, b's and c's.
Let's walk through an example with the input "dabdacbdcd":
a,b,c
-> 0,0,0
d -> 0,0,0
a -> 1,0,0
b -> 1,1,0
d -> 1,1,0
a -> 2,1,0
c -> 2,1,1 -> 1,0,0
b -> 1,1,0
d -> 1,1,0
c -> 1,1,1 -> 0,0,0
d -> 0,0,0
Because we're only interested in the difference between the number of a's, b'a and c's, not the actual number, we reduce a state like 2,1,1 to 1,0,0 by subtracting the lowest number from all three numbers.
We end up with a dictionary of these states, and the number of times they occur:
0,0,0 -> 4
1,0,0 -> 2
1,1,0 -> 4
2,1,0 -> 1
States which occur only once don't indicate an abc-equal substring, so we can discard them; we're then left with these repetitions of states:
4, 2, 4
If a state occurs twice, there is 1 abc-equal substring between those two locations. If a state occurs 4 times, there are 6 abc-equal substrings between them; e.g. the state 1,1,0 occurs at these points:
dab|d|acb|d|cd
Every substring between 2 of those 4 points is abc-equal:
d, dacb, dacbd, acb, acbd, d
In general, if a state occurs n times, it represents 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n-1 abc-equal substrings (or easier to calculate: n-1 × n/2). If we calculate this for every count in the dictionary, the total is our solution:
4 -> 3 x 2 = 6
2 -> 1 x 1 = 1
4 -> 3 x 2 = 6
--
13
Let's check the result by finding what those 13 substrings are:
1 d---------
2 dabdacbdc-
3 dabdacbdcd
4 -abdacbdc-
5 -abdacbdcd
6 --bdac----
7 ---d------
8 ---dacb---
9 ---dacbd--
10 ----acb---
11 ----acbd--
12 -------d--
13 ---------d
Consider Microsoft Excel's column-numbering system. Columns are "numbered" A, B, C, ... , Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, ... where A is 1.
The column system is similar to the base-10 numbering system that we're familiar with in that when any digit has its maximum value and is incremented, its value is set to the lowest possible digit value and the digit to its left is incremented, or a new digit is added at the minimum value. The difference is that there isn't a digit that represents zero in the letter numbering system. So if the "digit alphabet" contained ABC or 123, we could count like this:
(base 3 with zeros added for comparison)
base 3 no 0 base 3 with 0 base 10 with 0
----------- ------------- --------------
- - 0 0
A 1 1 1
B 2 2 2
C 3 10 3
AA 11 11 4
AB 12 12 5
AC 13 20 6
BA 21 21 7
BB 22 22 8
BC 23 100 9
CA 31 101 10
CB 32 102 11
CC 33 110 12
AAA 111 111 13
Converting from the zeroless system to our base 10 system is fairly simple; it's still a matter of multiplying the power of that space by the value in that space and adding it to the total. So in the case of AAA with the alphabet ABC, it's equivalent to (1*3^2) + (1*3^1) + (1*3^0) = 9 + 3 + 1 = 13.
I'm having trouble converting inversely, though. With a zero-based system, you can use a greedy algorithm moving from largest to smallest digit and grabbing whatever fits. This will not work for a zeroless system, however. For example, converting the base-10 number 10 to the base-3 zeroless system: Though 9 (the third digit slot: 3^2) would fit into 10, this would leave no possible configuration of the final two digits since their minimum values are 1*3^1 = 3 and 1*3^0 = 1 respectively.
Realistically, my digit alphabet will contain A-Z, so I'm looking for a quick, generalized conversion method that can do this without trial and error or counting up from zero.
Edit
The accepted answer by n.m. is primarily a string-manipulation-based solution.
For a purely mathematical solution see kennytm's links:
What is the algorithm to convert an Excel Column Letter into its Number?
How to convert a column number (eg. 127) into an excel column (eg. AA)
Convert to base-3-with-zeroes first (digits 0AB), and from there, convert to base-3-without-zeroes (ABC), using these string substitutions:
A0 => 0C
B0 => AC
C0 => BC
Each substitution either removes a zero, or pushes one to the left. In the end, discard leading zeroes.
It is also possible, as an optimisation, to process longer strings of zeros at once:
A000...000 = 0BBB...BBC
B000...000 = ABBB...BBC
C000...000 = BBBB...BBC
Generalizable to any base.
This is task from algorithms book.
The thing is that I completely don't know where to start!
Trace the following non-recursive algorithm to generate the binary reflexive
Gray code of order 4. Start with the n-bit string of all 0’s.
For i = 1, 2, ... 2^n-1, generate the i-th bit string by flipping bit b in the
previous bit string, where b is the position of the least significant 1 in the
binary representation of i.
So I know the Gray code for 1 bit should be 0 1, for 2 00 01 11 10 etc.
Many questions
1) Do I know that for n = 1 I can start of with 0 1?
2) How should I understand "start with the n-bit string of all 0's"?
3) "Previous bit string"? Which string is the "previous"? Previous means from lower n-bit? (for instance for n=2, previous is the one from n=1)?
4) How do I even convert 1-bit strings to 2-bit strings if the only operation there is to flip?
This confuses me a lot. The only "human" method I understand so far is: take sets from lower n-bit, duplicate them, invert the 2nd set, add 0's to every element in 1st set, add 1's do every elements in 2nd set. Done (example: 0 1 -> 0 1 | 0 1 -> 0 1 | 1 0 -> 00 01 | 11 10 -> 11 01 11 10 done.
Thanks for any help
The answer to all four your questions is that this algorithm does not start with lower values of n. All strings it generates have the same length, and the i-th (for i = 1, ..., 2n-1) string is generated from the (i-1)-th one.
Here is the fist few steps for n = 4:
Start with G0 = 0000
To generate G1, flip 0-th bit in G0, as 0 is the position of the least significant 1 in the binary representation of 1 = 0001b. G1 = 0001.
To generate G2, flip 1-st bit in G1, as 1 is the position of the least significant 1 in the binary representation of 2 = 0010b. G2 = 0011.
To generate G3, flip 0-th bit in G2, as 0 is the position of the least significant 1 in the binary representation of 3 = 0011b. G3 = 0010.
To generate G4, flip 2-nd bit in G3, as 2 is the position of the least significant 1 in the binary representation of 4 = 0100b. G4 = 0110.
To generate G5, flip 0-th bit in G4, as 0 is the position of the least significant 1 in the binary representation of 5 = 0101b. G5 = 0111.
My books(Artificial Intelligence A modern approach) says that Genetic algorithms begin with a set of k randomly generated states, called population. Each state is represented as a string over a finite alphabet- most commonly, a string of 0s and 1s. For eg, an 8-queens state must specify the positions of 8 queens, each in a column of 8 squares, and so requires 8 * log(2)8 = 24 bits. Alternatively the state could be represented as 8 digits, each in range from 1 to 8.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_queens_puzzle ]
I don't understand the expression 8 * log(2)8 = 24 bits , why log2 ^ 8? And what are these 24 bits supposed to be for?
If we take first example on the wikipedia page, the solution can be encoded as [2,4,6,8,3,1,7,5] : the first digit gives the row number for the queen in column A, the second for the queen in column B and so on. Now instead of starting the row numbering at 1, we will start at 0. The solution is then encoded with [1,3,5,7,0,6,4]. Any position can be encoded such way.
We have only digits between 0 and 7, if we write them in binary 3 bit (=log2(8)) are enough :
000 -> 0
001 -> 1
...
110 -> 6
111 -> 7
A position can be encoded using 8 times 3 digits, e.g. from [1,3,5,7,2,0,6,4] we get [001,011,101,111,010,000,110,100] or more briefly 001011101111010000110100 : 24 bits.
In the other way, the bitstring 000010001011100101111110 decodes as 000.010.001.011.100.101.111.110 then [0,2,1,3,4,5,7,6] and gives [1,3,2,4,5,8,7] : queen in column A is on row 1, queen in column B is on row 3, etc.
The number of bits needed to store the possible squares (8 possibilities 0-7) is log(2)8. Note that 111 in binary is 7 in decimal. You have to specify the square for 8 columns, so you need 3 bits 8 times