5 numbers equal 23 - algorithm

How can I check whether 5 given numbers and mathematical operations (+, -, *)could be arranged to get the result of 23?
For instance:
1 1 1 1 1 –– Impossible
1 2 3 4 5 –– Possible
Specifications:
All the operations have the same priority and performed from left to right (not in mathematically correct order).

While you can use brute force to try out every possible combination, i would suggest a slightly more elegant solution:
The last digit as well as multiplication is the key. If the result (23) isn't divisible by the last digit, then the last operator can't be "*". Then you can try out the same for the result +- the last digit, as it is either added or subtracted. Iterating backwards this way should save quite a few iterations.
Pseudo-Code Example:
var digits = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
var expected = 23;
var combinatoric = function(digits, expected) {
var result = false;
var digit = digits[digits.length -1];
var nDigits = digits.removeLast();
// If we are at the last digit...
if(nDigits.isEmpty() && Math.abs(digit) == Math.abs(expected)) {
//Last digit must be added or substracted, as its the starting digit.
result = true;
} else if(!nDigits.isEmpty()) {
//Only if divisible is "*" an option.
if(expected % digit == 0) {
if(combinatoric(nDigits, expected / digit) {
result = true;
}
}
// "+" and "-" are always options.
if(combinatoric(nDigits, expected - digit) {
result = true;
}
if(combinatoric(nDigits, expected + digit) {
result = true;
}
}
return result;
}
This approach saves at least a few iterations, as you dont try to multiply if it won't resolve to a natural number anyway. And by going backwards you can make this calculation recursive, as the modified expected result is passed on to every iteration.

Related

Maximum sum increasing subsequence, changing algorithm to use memoization

I have the following code which implements a recursive solution for this problem, instead of using the reference variable 'x' to store overall max, How can I or can I return the result from recursion so I don't have to use the 'x' which would help memoization?
// Test Cases:
// Input: {1, 101, 2, 3, 100, 4, 5} Output: 106
// Input: {3, 4, 5, 10} Output: 22
int sum(vector<int> seq)
{
int x = INT32_MIN;
helper(seq, seq.size(), x);
return x;
}
int helper(vector<int>& seq, int n, int& x)
{
if (n == 1) return seq[0];
int maxTillNow = seq[0];
int res = INT32_MIN;
for (int i = 1; i < n; ++i)
{
res = helper(seq, i, x);
if (seq[i - 1] < seq[n - 1] && res + seq[n - 1] > maxTillNow) maxTillNow = res + seq[n - 1];
}
x = max(x, maxTillNow);
return maxTillNow;
}
First, I don't think this implementation is correct. For this input {5, 1, 2, 3, 4} it gives 14 while the correct result is 10.
For writing a recursive solution for this problem, you don't need to pass x as a parameter, as x is the result you expect to get from the function itself. Instead, you can construct a state as the following:
Current index: this is the index you're processing at the current step.
Last taken number: This is the value of the last number you included in your result subsequence so far. This is to make sure that you pick larger numbers in the following steps to keep the result subsequence increasing.
So your function definition is something like sum(current_index, last_taken_number) = the maximum increasing sum from current_index until the end, given that you have to pick elements greater than last_taken_number to keep it an increasing subsequence, where the answer that you desire is sum(0, a small value) since it calculates the result for the whole sequence. by a small value I mean smaller than any other value in the whole sequence.
sum(current_index, last_taken_number) could be calculated recursively using smaller substates. First assume the simple cases:
N = 0, result is 0 since you don't have a sequence at all.
N = 1, the sequence contains only one number, the result is either that number or 0 in case the number is negative (I'm considering an empty subsequence as a valid subsequence, so not taking any number is a valid answer).
Now to the tricky part, when N >= 2.
Assume that N = 2. In this case you have two options:
Either ignore the first number, then the problem can be reduced to the N=1 version where that number is the last one in the sequence. In this case the result is the same as sum(1,MIN_VAL), where current_index=1 since we already processed index=0 and decided to ignore it, and MIN_VAL is the small value we mentioned above
Take the first number. Assume the its value is X. Then the result is X + sum(1, X). That means the solution includes X since you decided to include it in the sequence, plus whatever the result is from sum(1,X). Note that we're calling sum with MIN_VAL=X since we decided to take X, so the following values that we pick have to be greater than X.
Both decisions are valid. The result is whatever the maximum of these two. So we can deduce the general recurrence as the following:
sum(current_index, MIN_VAL) = max(
sum(current_index + 1, MIN_VAL) // ignore,
seq[current_index] + sum(current_index + 1, seq[current_index]) // take
).
The second decision is not always valid, so you have to make sure that the current element > MIN_VAL in order to be valid to take it.
This is a pseudo code for the idea:
sum(current_index, MIN_VAL){
if(current_index == END_OF_SEQUENCE) return 0
if( state[current_index,MIN_VAL] was calculated before ) return the perviously calculated result
decision_1 = sum(current_index + 1, MIN_VAL) // ignore case
if(sequence[current_index] > MIN_VAL) // decision_2 is valid
decision_2 = sequence[current_index] + sum(current_index + 1, sequence[current_index]) // take case
else
decision_2 = INT_MIN
result = max(decision_1, decision_2)
memorize result for the state[current_index, MIN_VAL]
return result
}

Swift - random number (min - max) avoiding repetition

I have a function that generate an integer random number between two given values. This function in my app will be called only two times however, I want to avoid that it generates two same numbers or two number next to each other. How could I fix the function below to achieve that?
Example Result:
1, 1 = wrong
1, 2 = wrong
8, 7 = wrong
8, 12 = correct
1, 3 = correct
3, 0 = correct
Function:
func randomNumber(minX:UInt32, maxX:UInt32) -> Int {
let result = (arc4random() % (maxX - minX + 1)) + minX
return Int(result)
}
EDIT:
How can it be a duplicate???
I am not asking to shuffle an array but I want to generate a single Int from two given numbers
You said "I want to avoid ... two numbers next to each other" so I don't understand how 8 ,7 is wrong but 8, 9 is correct.
Anyhow, my answer answer is based on your example. Just send the previous value and loop until you get a satisfactory asnwer:
func randomNumber(minX:UInt32, maxX:UInt32, previousNumber: Int? = nil) -> Int {
var result: Int
repeat {
result = Int((arc4random() % (maxX - minX + 1)) + minX)
} while previousNumber == result || previousNumber == result + 1
return result
}
let r1 = randomNumber(1, maxX: 3)
let r2 = randomNumber(1, maxX: 3, previousNumber: r1)
This will lead to an infinite loop when there's no number that can satisfy your conditions, for example:
randonNumber(1, maxX: 2, previousNumber: 2)
You should add a guard statement by working out the possibility mathematically and create a counter so that the repeat loop ends after, say 100 iterations.
Make global/static variable, where you will remember last valid generated number. Then add if statement, which will recursively call randomNumber, when you generate same(/next to each other) number as in that variable. If there hasn't been generated any number, set number out of interval.

algorithm for checking close by numbers for similarities in a list

I have a list and I need to find and extract all numbers in close proximity to a new list.
for example I have a list:
1,5,10,8,11,14,15,11,14,1,4,7,5,9
so if I want to extract all numbers that are close by 3(only 3, the gap must be 3, so 11,14 is correct, 11,13 is not.) near each other how can I design this without hard-coding the whole thing?
the result should look like:
8,11,14,11,14,1,4,7
This doesn't look too hard ,but I'm kind stuck, all I can come up with is a loop that checks n+1 member of the loop if it's more than n by 3 and include the n+1 member in a new list, however I don't know how to include the n member without making it appear on the new list twice if there is a string of needed numbers.
any ideas?
Just loop through the list, checking the next and previous element, and save the current one if it differs by 3 from either one. In Python, that's
>>> l = [1,5,10,8,11,14,15,11,14,1,4,7,5,9]
>>> # pad with infinities to ease the final loop
>>> l = [float('-inf')] + l + [float('inf')]
>>> [x for i, x in enumerate(l[1:-1], 1)
... if 3 in (abs(x - l[i-1]), abs(x - l[i+1]))]
[8, 11, 14, 11, 14, 1, 4, 7]
In Matlab
list = [1,5,10,8,11,14,15,11,14,1,4,7,5,9]
then
list(or([diff([0 diff(list)==3]) 0],[0 diff(list)==3]))
returns
8 11 14 11 14 1 4 7
For those who don't understand Matlab diff(list) returns the first (forward) differences of the elements in list. The expression [0 diff(list)] pads the first differences with a leading 0 to make the result the same length as the original list. The rest should be obvious.
In a nutshell: take forward differences and backward differences, select the elements where either difference is 3.
A simple C++ code below:
assuming ar is the array of the initial integers and mark is a boolean array
for(int i=1;i<N;i++){
if(ar[i]-ar[i-1]==3){
mark[i]=1;
mark[i-1]=1;
}
}
Now to print the interesting numbers,
for(int i=0;i<N;i++){
if(mark[i]==1)cout<<ar[i]<<" ";
}
The idea behind the implementation is, we mark a number as interesting if the difference from it to its previous one is 3 or if the difference between it and its next number is 3.
that's a single loop:
public List<int> CloseByN(int n, List<int> oldL)
{
bool first = true;
int last = 0;
bool isLstAdded = false;
List<int> newL = new List<int>();
foreach(int curr in oldL)
{
if(first)
{
first = false;
last = curr;
continue;
}
if(curr - last == n)
{
if(isLstAdded == false)
{
newL.Add(last);
isLstAdded = true;
}
newL.Add(curr);
}
else
{
isLstAdded = false;
}
last = curr;
}
return newL;
}
tested on your input and got your output
And a Haskell version:
f g xs = dropWhile (null . drop 1) $ foldr comb [[last xs]] (init xs) where
comb a bbs#(b:bs)
| abs (a - head b) == g = (a:head bbs) : bs
| otherwise =
if null (drop 1 b) then [a] : bs else [a] : bbs
Output:
*Main> f 3 [5,10,8,11,14,15,11,14,1,4,7,5,9]
[[8,11,14],[11,14],[1,4,7]]
*Main> f 5 [5,10,8,11,14,15,11,14,1,4,7,5,9]
[[5,10]]

Find a random number generator using a given random number generating function

This is an interview question:
Given a function which generates a random number in [1,5],we need to use this function to generate a random number in the range [1,9].
I thought about it a lot but am not able to write an equation where ramdomness is satisfied.
People please answer.This might be helpful maybe in some future interviews.
Adapted from "Expand a random range from 1–5 to 1–7"
It assumes rand5() is a function that returns a statistically random integer in the range 1 through 5 inclusive.
int rand9()
{
int vals[5][5] = {
{ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 },
{ 6, 7, 8, 9, 1 },
{ 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 },
{ 7, 8, 9, 0, 0 },
{ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 }
};
int result = 0;
while (result == 0)
{
int i = rand5();
int j = rand5();
result= vals[i-1][j-1];
}
return result;
}
How does it work? Think of it like this: imagine printing out this double-dimension array on paper, tacking it up to a dart board and randomly throwing darts at it. If you hit a non-zero value, it's a statistically random value between 1 and 9, since there are an equal number of non-zero values to choose from. If you hit a zero, just keep throwing the dart until you hit a non-zero. That's what this code is doing: the i and j indexes randomly select a location on the dart board, and if we don't get a good result, we keep throwing darts.
this can run forever in the worst case, but statistically the worst case never happens. :)
int rand9()
{
int t1,t2,res = 10;
do {
t1 = rand5();
do {
t2 = rand5();
}while(t2==5);
res = t1 + 5* (t2%2);
}while(res==10);
return res;
}
now 1 to 9 has the probability of 1/9.
make some explanation:
t1 has probability of 1/5 to be 1 to 5.
t2,too.but when t2==5,discarded.so t2 has probability of 1/4 to be 1 to 4.that' to say, probability of 1/2 to be odd or even,which makes t2%2 has probability of 1/2 to be 0 to 1.
thus, t1 + 5*(t2%2) has probability of 5/10 to be 1 to 5, and 5/10 to be 6 to 10.
but 10 is discarded again,so the rest 9 numbers' probability is 1/9.
You need to use rejection sampling. That is, reject results that don't fit your target distribution. In your case you could use the lower three bits of two successive calls to your rand15 function (− 1 if necessary), concatenate them and reject those results that are outside your target interval and retry until you find a number that's inside.

Algorithm Issue: letter combinations

I'm trying to write a piece of code that will do the following:
Take the numbers 0 to 9 and assign one or more letters to this number. For example:
0 = N,
1 = L,
2 = T,
3 = D,
4 = R,
5 = V or F,
6 = B or P,
7 = Z,
8 = H or CH or J,
9 = G
When I have a code like 0123, it's an easy job to encode it. It will obviously make up the code NLTD. When a number like 5,6 or 8 is introduced, things get different. A number like 051 would result in more than one possibility:
NVL and NFL
It should be obvious that this gets even "worse" with longer numbers that include several digits like 5,6 or 8.
Being pretty bad at mathematics, I have not yet been able to come up with a decent solution that will allow me to feed the program a bunch of numbers and have it spit out all the possible letter combinations. So I'd love some help with it, 'cause I can't seem to figure it out. Dug up some information about permutations and combinations, but no luck.
Thanks for any suggestions/clues. The language I need to write the code in is PHP, but any general hints would be highly appreciated.
Update:
Some more background: (and thanks a lot for the quick responses!)
The idea behind my question is to build a script that will help people to easily convert numbers they want to remember to words that are far more easily remembered. This is sometimes referred to as "pseudo-numerology".
I want the script to give me all the possible combinations that are then held against a database of stripped words. These stripped words just come from a dictionary and have all the letters I mentioned in my question stripped out of them. That way, the number to be encoded can usually easily be related to a one or more database records. And when that happens, you end up with a list of words that you can use to remember the number you wanted to remember.
It can be done easily recursively.
The idea is that to handle the whole code of size n, you must handle first the n - 1 digits.
Once you have all answers for n-1 digits, the answers for the whole are deduced by appending to them the correct(s) char(s) for the last one.
There's actually a much better solution than enumerating all the possible translations of a number and looking them up: Simply do the reverse computation on every word in your dictionary, and store the string of digits in another field. So if your mapping is:
0 = N,
1 = L,
2 = T,
3 = D,
4 = R,
5 = V or F,
6 = B or P,
7 = Z,
8 = H or CH or J,
9 = G
your reverse mapping is:
N = 0,
L = 1,
T = 2,
D = 3,
R = 4,
V = 5,
F = 5,
B = 6,
P = 6,
Z = 7,
H = 8,
J = 8,
G = 9
Note there's no mapping for 'ch', because the 'c' will be dropped, and the 'h' will be converted to 8 anyway.
Then, all you have to do is iterate through each letter in the dictionary word, output the appropriate digit if there's a match, and do nothing if there isn't.
Store all the generated digit strings as another field in the database. When you want to look something up, just perform a simple query for the number entered, instead of having to do tens (or hundreds, or thousands) of lookups of potential words.
The general structure you want to hold your number -> letter assignments is an array or arrays, similar to:
// 0 = N, 1 = L, 2 = T, 3 = D, 4 = R, 5 = V or F, 6 = B or P, 7 = Z,
// 8 = H or CH or J, 9 = G
$numberMap = new Array (
0 => new Array("N"),
1 => new Array("L"),
2 => new Array("T"),
3 => new Array("D"),
4 => new Array("R"),
5 => new Array("V", "F"),
6 => new Array("B", "P"),
7 => new Array("Z"),
8 => new Array("H", "CH", "J"),
9 => new Array("G"),
);
Then, a bit of recursive logic gives us a function similar to:
function GetEncoding($number) {
$ret = new Array();
for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($number); $i++) {
// We're just translating here, nothing special.
// $var + 0 is a cheap way of forcing a variable to be numeric
$ret[] = $numberMap[$number[$i]+0];
}
}
function PrintEncoding($enc, $string = "") {
// If we're at the end of the line, then print!
if (count($enc) === 0) {
print $string."\n";
return;
}
// Otherwise, soldier on through the possible values.
// Grab the next 'letter' and cycle through the possibilities for it.
foreach ($enc[0] as $letter) {
// And call this function again with it!
PrintEncoding(array_slice($enc, 1), $string.$letter);
}
}
Three cheers for recursion! This would be used via:
PrintEncoding(GetEncoding("052384"));
And if you really want it as an array, play with output buffering and explode using "\n" as your split string.
This kind of problem are usually resolved with recursion. In ruby, one (quick and dirty) solution would be
#values = Hash.new([])
#values["0"] = ["N"]
#values["1"] = ["L"]
#values["2"] = ["T"]
#values["3"] = ["D"]
#values["4"] = ["R"]
#values["5"] = ["V","F"]
#values["6"] = ["B","P"]
#values["7"] = ["Z"]
#values["8"] = ["H","CH","J"]
#values["9"] = ["G"]
def find_valid_combinations(buffer,number)
first_char = number.shift
#values[first_char].each do |key|
if(number.length == 0) then
puts buffer + key
else
find_valid_combinations(buffer + key,number.dup)
end
end
end
find_valid_combinations("",ARGV[0].split(""))
And if you run this from the command line you will get:
$ ruby r.rb 051
NVL
NFL
This is related to brute-force search and backtracking
Here is a recursive solution in Python.
#!/usr/bin/env/python
import sys
ENCODING = {'0':['N'],
'1':['L'],
'2':['T'],
'3':['D'],
'4':['R'],
'5':['V', 'F'],
'6':['B', 'P'],
'7':['Z'],
'8':['H', 'CH', 'J'],
'9':['G']
}
def decode(str):
if len(str) == 0:
return ''
elif len(str) == 1:
return ENCODING[str]
else:
result = []
for prefix in ENCODING[str[0]]:
result.extend([prefix + suffix for suffix in decode(str[1:])])
return result
if __name__ == '__main__':
print decode(sys.argv[1])
Example output:
$ ./demo 1
['L']
$ ./demo 051
['NVL', 'NFL']
$ ./demo 0518
['NVLH', 'NVLCH', 'NVLJ', 'NFLH', 'NFLCH', 'NFLJ']
Could you do the following:
Create a results array.
Create an item in the array with value ""
Loop through the numbers, say 051 analyzing each one individually.
Each time a 1 to 1 match between a number is found add the correct value to all items in the results array.
So "" becomes N.
Each time a 1 to many match is found, add new rows to the results array with one option, and update the existing results with the other option.
So N becomes NV and a new item is created NF
Then the last number is a 1 to 1 match so the items in the results array become
NVL and NFL
To produce the results loop through the results array, printing them, or whatever.
Let pn be a list of all possible letter combinations of a given number string s up to the nth digit.
Then, the following algorithm will generate pn+1:
digit = s[n+1];
foreach(letter l that digit maps to)
{
foreach(entry e in p(n))
{
newEntry = append l to e;
add newEntry to p(n+1);
}
}
The first iteration is somewhat of a special case, since p-1 is undefined. You can simply initialize p0 as the list of all possible characters for the first character.
So, your 051 example:
Iteration 0:
p(0) = {N}
Iteration 1:
digit = 5
foreach({V, F})
{
foreach(p(0) = {N})
{
newEntry = N + V or N + F
p(1) = {NV, NF}
}
}
Iteration 2:
digit = 1
foreach({L})
{
foreach(p(1) = {NV, NF})
{
newEntry = NV + L or NF + L
p(2) = {NVL, NFL}
}
}
The form you want is probably something like:
function combinations( $str ){
$l = len( $str );
$results = array( );
if ($l == 0) { return $results; }
if ($l == 1)
{
foreach( $codes[ $str[0] ] as $code )
{
$results[] = $code;
}
return $results;
}
$cur = $str[0];
$combs = combinations( substr( $str, 1, $l ) );
foreach ($codes[ $cur ] as $code)
{
foreach ($combs as $comb)
{
$results[] = $code.$comb;
}
}
return $results;}
This is ugly, pidgin-php so please verify it first. The basic idea is to generate every combination of the string from [1..n] and then prepend to the front of all those combinations each possible code for str[0]. Bear in mind that in the worst case this will have performance exponential in the length of your string, because that much ambiguity is actually present in your coding scheme.
The trick is not only to generate all possible letter combinations that match a given number, but to select the letter sequence that is most easy to remember. A suggestion would be to run the soundex algorithm on each of the sequence and try to match against an English language dictionary such as Wordnet to find the most 'real-word-sounding' sequences.

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