Create iterator from total difference - ruby

I want to iterate through the integers from x up to n values further. I can do this for example with:
x.upto(x + n - 1)
or many other ways, but all of them require me to calculate the end myself, which seems not very elegant. Is there any way to create an iterator directly from the total difference to be iterated?
I imagine something like this:
5.up(10).to_a
# returns [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]
I know I could easily write it myself, but I want to know if what I want already exists in the core.

5.step.take(10) # => [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14]

Related

How to solve combinations in card game for n people in r rounds (just one encounter)

There is a famous card game in Germany called "Doppelkopf".
Usually, you play "Doppelkopf" with 4 players, but you can also play it with a table of 5 players, where one player is just watching.
(Where everyone "has the cards" once in a round, meaning everyone has the right to play the first card once every round.)
Every year, my family organizes a "Doppelkopf" tournament with 3 rounds (r).
Depending on the availabilty of my relatives, every year the number of participants varies.
Expecting a minimun of participant of 16 people, the number (n) in this experiment can rise up unlimited (as does the number of rounds r).
Naturally, my relatives do not want to be paired with someone twice, since they want to exchange gossip most efficiently!
There we have:
n - Participants
r- Rounds
t_total = n // 4 # Total Tables (round down of n)
t_5 = n % 4 # Tables of 5s
t_4 = t_total - t_5 # Tables of 4s
pos_pair = n * (n - 1) / 2 # possible pairs (n over 2)
nec_pair = (t_5 * 10 + t_4 * 6) * r # necessary pairs
I was instructed with the aim to minimize the encounters (if possible to set encounters == 1 for everyone)!
Since, I do not want to solve the problem for P{n={16, ..., 32}, r=3} (which I did for some cases), but to solve it with any given P{n∈N, r∈N} , there is a discrepancy between my abilities and the requirements for a solution!
Therefore, I would like to ask the community to help me with this problem, to solve it for any given P{n∈N, r∈N}!
And also to prove, if this problem is not solvable for any P{n∈N, r∈N}, which is given "if pos_pair < nec_pair".
Here are two solutions for P{n=20, r=3}:
which very much solves my "Doppelkopf" tournament problem:
('Best result was ', [[[1, 2, 3, 4], [5, 6, 7, 8], [9, 10, 11, 12], [13, 14, 15, 16], [17, 18, 19, 20]], [[16, 12, 8, 18], [13, 1, 5, 9], [15, 4, 17, 6], [2, 19, 7, 10], [3, 11, 20, 14]], [[14, 9, 17, 7], [13, 20, 8, 2], [5, 4, 12, 19], [6, 16, 11, 1], [15, 18, 10, 3]]])
('Best result was ', [[[1, 2, 3, 4], [5, 6, 7, 8], [9, 10, 11, 12], [13, 14, 15, 16], [17, 18, 19, 20]], [[19, 11, 13, 3], [2, 15, 9, 8], [1, 16, 18, 6], [14, 7, 17, 10], [4, 12, 20, 5]], [[17, 8, 3, 12], [20, 9, 16, 7], [15, 11, 6, 4], [2, 13, 10, 18], [1, 19, 14, 5]]])
But in order to solve this problem with an arbitrary n and r I have come to no conclusion.
In my opinion, there are three ways to go about this problem in a computational solution or approximation.
First, you can iterate about rounds, and assign every player to a
table without having collision, remembering pairs and appeareances
in total (not to exeed total rounds)
Secondly, you can iterate about tables, which seems to be helpful with participants, that are a multiple of 2 (see for P{n=16, r=5}
https://matheplanet.com/default3.html?call=viewtopic.php?topic=85206&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)
also remeber pairs and appearances, but mainly follow a certain
patters as described in the link, which I somehow can not scale to
other numbers!!
There is somehow a mathemathical way to descibe this procedure and conclude a solution
Even though, this is more of a mathematical question (and I don't know where to ask those questions), I am interested in the algorithmic solution!

Optimal strategy for two player coin games

Two players take turns choosing one of the outer coins. At the end we calculate the difference
between the score two players get, given that they play optimally.
The greedy strategy of getting the max. value of coin often does not lead to the best results in my case.
Now I developed an algorithm:
Sample:{9,1,15,22,4,8}
We calculate the sum of coins in even index and that of coins in odd index.
Compare the two sum, (9+15+4)<(1+22+8) so sum of odd is greater. We then pick the coin with odd index, in our sample that would be 8.
the opponent, who plays optimally, will try to pick the greater coin, e.g. 9.
There is always a coin at odd index after the opponent finished, so we keep picking the coins
at odd index, that would be 1.
looping the above steps we will get a difference of (8+1+22) - (9+15+4) = 3.
6.vice versa if sum of even is greater in step 2.
I have compared the results generated by my algorithm with a 2nd algorithm similar to below one: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/optimal-strategy-for-a-game-set-2/?ref=rp
And the results were congruent, until my test generated a random long array:
[6, 14, 6, 8, 6, 3, 14, 5, 18, 6, 19, 17, 10, 11, 14, 16, 15, 18, 7, 8, 6, 9, 0, 15, 7, 4, 19, 9, 5, 2, 0, 18, 2, 8, 19, 14, 4, 8, 11, 2, 6, 16, 16, 13, 10, 19, 6, 17, 13, 13, 15, 3, 18, 2, 14, 13, 3, 4, 2, 13, 17, 14, 3, 4, 14, 1, 15, 10, 2, 19, 2, 6, 16, 7, 16, 14, 7, 0, 9, 4, 9, 6, 15, 9, 3, 15, 11, 19, 7, 3, 18, 14, 11, 10, 2, 3, 7, 3, 18, 7, 7, 14, 6, 4, 6, 12, 4, 19, 15, 19, 17, 3, 3, 1, 9, 19, 12, 6, 7, 1, 6, 6, 19, 7, 15, 1, 1, 6]
My algorithm generated 26 as the result, while the 2nd algorithm generated 36.
Mine is nothing about dynamic programming and it requires less memory, whereas i also implemented the 2nd one with memoization.
This is confusing since mine is correct with most of the array cases until this one.
Any help would be appreciated!
If the array is of even length, your algorithm tries to produce a guaranteed win. You can prove that quite easily. But it doesn't necessarily produce the optimal win. In particular it won't find strategies where you want some coins that are on even indexes and others on odd indexes.
The following short example illustrates the point.
[10, 1, 1, 20, 1, 1]
Your algorithm will look at evens vs odds, realize that 10+1+1 < 1+20+1 and take the last element first. Guaranteeing a win by 10.
But you want both the 10 and the 20. Therefore the optimal strategy is to take the 10 leaving 1, 1, 20, 1, 1, whichever side the other person takes you take the other to get to 1, 20, 1, and then whichever side the other takes you take the middle. Resulting in you getting 10, 1, 20 and the other person getting 1, 1, 1. Guaranteeing a win by 28.

What's the reason the second code won't return what the first code successfully returns

I was doing a quick read up on arrays and some basic methods. And one of the exercise questions at the end of the reading gave me an array and asked to get the following output
=> [10, 8, 4, 2]
Here's the array:
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
solution:1
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
numbers = numbers.select { |number| number.even? }.reverse
numbers.delete(6)
p numbers
But my question to you is why would the above code return the correct output but the following code won't?
solution: 2
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
numbers = numbers.select { |number| number.even? }
numbers.delete(6)
numbers.reverse
p numbers
I understand it's not the most fluent, but when I try to solve these exercises it's easier for me to separate everything and then clean up the code.
I expected it to pull the even numbers delete 6 from them and then print the reversed array.
Instead it pulls the even numbers, deletes 6, and prints the even numbers. Completely skips the .reverse
As max says, .reverse doesn't change the array. Try, instead:
numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
numbers = numbers.select { |number| number.even? }
numbers.delete(6)
numbers.reverse!
p numbers
=> [10, 8, 4, 2]
As other commenters have mentioned, .reverse doesn't change the array.
You either have to declare numbers.reverse as a new variable (i.e. reversed_numbers = numbers.reverse) or use numbers.reverse! (as demonstrated by jvillian) to change the value of the numbers variable itself at invocation.
Between the two, the latter method is more suitable.
Hope this helped!

How to Generate N random numbers from a SHA-256 Hash

I'm working on a "provably fair" site where let's say X participants enter into a drawing and we need to pick first 1 overall winner, but then ideally we also want to pick N sub-winners out of the X total.
(for the curious, the SHA-256 Hash will be the merkle tree root of a Bitcoin block at a pre-specified time)
So, given a SHA-256 hash, how do we generate N random numbers?
I think I know how to generate 1 random number (within ruby's Fixnum range). According to this article: http://patshaughnessy.net/2014/1/9/how-big-is-a-bignum
The maximum Fixnum integer is: 4611686018427387903
Let's pluck the first Y characters of the SHA-256 hash. We can generate one instead of relying on a Bitcoin merkle root with:
d = Digest::SHA256.hexdigest('hello')
> "2cf24dba5fb0a30e26e83b2ac5b9e29e1b161e5c1fa7425e73043362938b9824"
Let's take the first 6 characters, or: 2cf24d
Convert this to base 10:
'2cf24d'.to_i(16)
> 2945613
We now have a unique Fixnum based on our merkle root.
With X participants, let's say 17, we decide the winner with:
2945613 % 17
> 6
So assuming all entries know their order of entry, the sixth entrant can prove that they should be the winner.
Now -- what would be the best way to similarly pick N sub-winners? Let's say each of these entrants should get a smaller but still somewhat valuable prize.
Why not just use the hash for the seed?
[*1..17].shuffle(random: Random.new(0x2cf24d))
# => [15, 5, 9, 7, 14, 3, 16, 12, 2, 1, 17, 4, 6, 13, 11, 10, 8]
[*1..17].shuffle(random: Random.new(0x2cf24d))
# => [15, 5, 9, 7, 14, 3, 16, 12, 2, 1, 17, 4, 6, 13, 11, 10, 8]
EDIT: This is dependent on Ruby version though - I believe shuffle is different between JRuby and MRI, even though Random produces the same sequence. You could circumvent this by implementing shuffle yourself. See this question for more details. This workaround works consistently for me in both JRuby and MRI:
r = Random.new(0x2cf24d)
[*1..17].sort_by { r.rand }
# => [14, 11, 4, 10, 1, 3, 9, 13, 16, 17, 12, 5, 8, 2, 6, 7, 15]
r = Random.new(0x2cf24d)
[*1..17].sort_by { r.rand }
# => [14, 11, 4, 10, 1, 3, 9, 13, 16, 17, 12, 5, 8, 2, 6, 7, 15]

Ruby: Turn an array of arrays into a hash with 3 key value pairs

Ok started over, apologies for my verbose and poorly structured original post.
My question is basically this: is it possible to take an array of arrays and divide it into three equal-ish parts, sending each part to a hash where there are three key value pairs as described below?
Sample input: an array of arrays like:
orig_array = [[13, 11, 19, 17, 12, 5, 3], [3, 9, 2, 20], [5, 21, 15, 4],
[18, 14, 16, 10], [6, 1, 8, 7], [15, 4, 17, 6], [3, 19, 13, 14], [9, 21, 12, 7],
[20, 11, 2, 18], [8, 10, 1, 16], [10, 6, 21, 17], [15, 11, 14, 19], [13, 2, 9, 18],
[5, 12, 16, 7], [20, 4, 1,8]]
Desired output: a hash where each key is a number starting with 1 and counting up, and each value is one third of the array, like:
hash = { 1=>[[array of arrays containing first 1/3rd elements from orig_array]],
2=>[[array of arrays containing next 1/3rd elements from orig_array]]
3=>[[array of arrays containing next 1/3rd remaining elements from orig_array]]}
To be clear, this is part of an exercise for a class. The exercise is not to find a way to divide an array of arrays like this, I just feel like doing so could be part of one potential solution and am looking for guidance. Thanks!
def unique_group_of_three(array)
multiple = array.size / 3
return "Your collection is too small" if multiple < 5
multiples = [multiple, multiple *2]
array = array.shuffle
{
:first => array[0...multiple].uniq,
:second => array[multiple...multiples[1]].uniq,
:third => array[multiples[1]..-1]].uniq
}
end

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