Alternative approach for Rod Cutting Algorithm ( Recursive ) - algorithm

In the book Introduction To Algorithms , the naive approach to solving rod cutting problem can be described by the following recurrence:
Let q be the maximum price that can be obtained from a rod of length n.
Let array price[1..n] store the given prices . price[i] is the given price for a rod of length i.
rodCut(int n)
{
initialize q as q=INT_MIN
for i=1 to n
q=max(q,price[i]+rodCut(n-i))
return q
}
What if I solve it using the below approach:
rodCutv2(int n)
{
if(n==0)
return 0
initialize q = price[n]
for i = 1 to n/2
q = max(q, rodCutv2(i) + rodCutv2(n-i))
return q
}
Is this approach correct? If yes, why do we generally use the first one? Why is it better?
NOTE:
I am just concerned with the approach to solving this problem . I know that this problem exhibits optimal substructure and overlapping subproblems and can be solved efficiently using dynamic programming.

The problem with the second version is it's not making use of the price array. There is no base case of the recursion so it'll never stop. Even if you add a condition to return price[i] when n == 1 it'll always return the result of cutting the rod into pieces of size 1.

your 2nd approach is absolutely correct and its time complexity is also same as the 1st one.
In Dynamic Programming also, we can make tabulation on same approach.Here is my solution for recursion :
int rodCut (int price[],int n){
if(n<=0) return 0;
int ans = price[n-1];
for(int i=1; i<=n/2 ; ++i){
ans=max(ans, (rodCut(price , i) + rodCut(price , n-i)));
}
return ans;
}
And, Solution for Dynamic Programming :
int rodCut(int *price,int n){
int ans[n+1];
ans[0]=0; // if length of rod is zero
for(int i=1;i<=n;++i){
int max_value=price[i-1];
for(int j=1;j<=i/2;++j){
max_value=max(max_value,ans[j]+ans[i-j]);
}
ans[i]=max_value;
}
return ans[n];
}

Your algorithm looks almost correct - you need to be a bit careful when n is odd.
However, it's also exponential in time complexity - you make two recursive calls in each call to rodCutv2. The first algorithm uses memoisation (the price array), so avoids computing the same thing multiple times, and so is faster (it's polynomial-time).
Edit: Actually, the first algorithm isn't correct! It never stores values in prices, but I suspect that's just a typo and not intentional.

Related

Big-O & Runing Time of this algorthm , how can convert this to an iterative algorthm

What is the runing time of this algorthm in Big-O and how i convert this to iterative algorthm?
public static int RecursiveMaxOfArray(int[] array) {
int array1[] = new int[array.length/2];
int array2[] = new int[array.length - (array.length/2)];
for (int index = 0; index < array.length/2 ; index++) {
array1[index] = array[index];
}
for (int index = array.length/2; index < array.length; index++) {
array2[index - array.length/2] = array[index] ;
}
if (array.length > 1) {
if(RecursiveMaxOfArray(array1) > RecursiveMaxOfArray(array2)) {
return RecursiveMaxOfArray(array1) ;
}
else {
return RecursiveMaxOfArray(array2) ;
}
}
return array[0] ;
}
At each stage, an array of size N is divided into equal halves. The function is then recursively called three times on an array of size N/2. Why three instead of the four which are written? Because the if statement only enters one of its clauses. Therefore the recurrence relation is T(N) = 3T(N/2) + O(N), which (using the Master theorem) gives O(N^[log2(3)]) = O(n^1.58).
However, you don't need to call it for the third time; just cache the return result of each recursive call in a local variable. The coefficient 3 in the recurrence relation becomes 2; I'll leave it to you to apply the Master theorem on the new recurrence.
There's another answer that accurately describes your algorithm's runtime complexity, how to determine it, and how to improve it, so I won't focus on that. Instead, let's look at the other part of your question:
how [do] i convert this to [an] iterative algorithm?
Well, there's a straightforward solution to that which you hopefully could have gotten yourself - loop over the list and track the smallest value you've seen so far.
However, I'm guessing your question is better phrased as this:
How do I convert a recursive algorithm into an iterative algorithm?
There are plenty of questions and answers on this, not just here on StackOverflow, so I suggest you do some more research on this subject. These blog posts on converting recursion to iteration may be an excellent place to start if this is your approach to take, though I can't vouch for them because I haven't read them. I just googled "convert recursion to iteration," picked the first result, then found this page which links to all four of the blog post.

Finding the temporal complexity of an exponential algorithm

Problem: Find best way to cut a rod of length n.
Each cut is integer length.
Assume that each length i rod has a price p(i).
Given: rod of length n, and a list of prices p, which provided the price of each possible integer lenght between 0 and n.
Find best set of cuts to get maximum price.
Can use any number of cuts, from 0 to n−1.
There is no cost for a cut.
Following I present a naive algorithm for this problem.
CUT-ROD(p,n)
if(n == 0)
return 0
q = -infinity
for i = 1 to n
q = max(q, p[i]+CUT-ROD(p,n-1))
return q
How can I prove that this algorithm is exponential? Step-by-step.
I can see that it is exponential. However, I'm not able to proove it.
Let's translate the code to C++ for clarity:
int prices[n];
int cut-rod(int n) {
if(n == 0) {
return 0;
}
q = -1;
res = cut-rod(n-1);
for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
q = max(q, prices[i] + res);
}
return q;
}
Note: We are caching the result of cut-rod(n-1) to avoid unnecessarily increasing the complexity of the algorithm. Here, we can see that cut-rod(n) calls cut-rod(n-1), which calls cut-rod(n-2) and so on until cut-rod(0). For cut-rod(n), we see that the function iterates over the array n times. Therefore the time complexity of the algorithm is equal to O(n + (n-1) + (n-2) + (n-3)...1) = O(n(n+1)/2) which is approximately equal to O((n^2)/2).
EDIT:
If we are using the exact same algorithm as the one in the question, its time complexity is O(n!) since cut-rod(n) calls cut-rod(n-1) n times. cut-rod(n-1) calls cut-rod(n-2) n-1 times and so on. Therefore the time complexity is equal to O(n*(n-1)*(n-2)...1) = O(n!).
I am unsure if this counts as a step-by-step solution but it can be shown easily by induction/substitution. Just assume T(i)=2^i for all i<n then we show that it holds for n:

Modification to subsetsum algorithm by pisinger

I was looking at the algorithm by pisinger as detailed here
Fast solution to Subset sum algorithm by Pisinger
and on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset_sum_problem
For the case that each xi is positive and bounded by a fixed constant C, Pisinger found a linear time algorithm having time complexity O(NC).[3] (Note that this is for the version of the problem where the target sum is not necessarily zero, otherwise the problem would be trivial.)
It seems that, with his approach, there are two constraints. The first one in particular says that all values in any input, must be <= C.
It sounds to me that, with just that constraint alone, this is not an algorithm that can solve the original subset sum problem (with no restrictions).
But suppose C=1000000 for example. Then before we even run the algorithm on the input list. Can't we just divide every element by some number d (and also divide the target sum by d too) such that every number in the input list will be <= C.
When the algorithm returns some subset s, we just multiply every element in s by d. And we will have our true subset.
With that observation, it feels like it not worth mentioning that we need that C constraint. Or at least say that the input can be changed W.L.O.G (without loss of generality). So we can still solve the same problem no matter the input. That constraint is not making the problem any harder in other words. So really his algorithms only constraint is that it can only handle numbers >=0.
Am I right?
Thanks
What adrian.budau said is correct.
In Polynomial solution,
every value of array should remain as integer after the division you said.
otherwise DP solution does not work anymore, because item values are used as index in DP array.
Following is my Polynomial(DP) solution for subsetsum problem(C=ELEMENT_MAX_VALUE)
bool subsetsum_dp(VI& v, int sum)
{
const int MAX_ELEMENT = 100;
const int MAX_ELEMENT_VALUE = 1000;
static int dp[MAX_ELEMENT+1][MAX_ELEMENT*MAX_ELEMENT_VALUE + 1]; memset(dp, -1, sizeof(dp));
int n = S(v);
dp[0][0] = 1, dp[0][v[0]] = 1;//include, excluse the value
FOR(i, 1, n)
{
REP(j, MAX_ELEMENT*MAX_ELEMENT_VALUE + 1)
{
if (dp[i-1][j] != -1) dp[i][j] = 1, dp[i][j + v[i]] = 1;//include, excluse the value
}
}
if (dp[n-1][sum] == 1) return true;
return false;
}

How to find recurrence relation from recursive algorithm

I know how to find recurrence relation from simple recursive algorithms.
For e.g.
QuickSort(A,LB, UB){
key = A[LB]
i = LB
j = UB + 1
do{
do{
i = i + 1
}while(A[i] < key)
do{
j = j - 1
}while(A[j] > key)
if(i < j){
swap(A[i]<->A[j])
}while(i <= j)
swap(key<->A[j]
QuickSort(A,LB,J-1)
QuickSort(A,J+1,UB)
}
T(n) = T(n - a) + T(a) + n
In the above recursive algorithm it was quite easy to understand how the input size is reducing after each recursive call. But how to find recurrence relation for any algorithm in general, which is not recursive but might also be iterative. So i started learning how to convert iterative algorithm to recursive just to make it easy to find recurrence relation.
I found this link http://refactoring.com/catalog/replaceIterationWithRecursion.html.
I used to convert my linear search algorithm to recursive.
LinearSearch(A,x,LB,UB){
PTR = LB
while(A[PTR]!=x && PTR<=UB){
if(PTR==UB+1){
print("Element does not exist")
}
else{
print("location"+PTR)
}
}
}
got converted to
LinearSearch(A,x,LB,UB){
PTR=LB
print("Location"+search(A,PTR,UB,x))
}
search(A,PTR,UB,x){
if(A[PTR]!=x && PTR<=UB){
if(PTR==UB+1){
return -1
}
else{
return search(A,PTR+1,UB,x)
}
}
else{
return PTR
}
}
This gives the recurrence relation to be T(n) = T(n-1) + 1
But i was wondering is this the right approach to find recurrence relation for any algorithm?
Plus i don't know how to find recurrence relation for algorithms where more than one parameter is increasing or decreasing.
e.g.
unsigned greatest_common_divisor (const unsigned a, const unsigned b)
{
if (a > b)
{
return greatest_common_divisor(a-b, b);
}
else if (b > a)
{
return greatest_common_divisor(a, b-a);
}
else // a == b
{
return a;
}
}
First of all, algorithms are very flexible so you should not expect to have a simple rule that covers all of them.
That said, one thing that I think will be helpful for you is to pay more attention to the structure of the input you pass to your algorithm than to the algorithm yourself. For example, consider that QuickSort you showed in your post. If you glance at those nested do-whiles you are probably going to guess its O(N^2) when in reality its O(N). The real answer is easier to find by looking at the inputs: i always increases and j always decreases and when they finaly meet each other, each of the N indices of the array will have been visited exactly once.
Plus I don't know how to find recurrence relation for algorithms where more than one parameter is increasing or decreasing.
Well, those algorithms are certainly harder than the ones with a single variable. For the euclidean algorithm you used as an example, the complexity is actually not trivial to figure out and it involves thinking about greatest-common-divisors instead of just looking at the source code for the algorithm's implementation.

Coin change algorithm and pseudocode: Need clarification

I'm trying to understand the coin change problem solution, but am having some difficulty.
At the Algorithmist, there is a pseudocode solution for the dynamic programming solution, shown below:
n = goal number
S = [S1, S2, S3 ... Sm]
function sequence(n, m)
//initialize base cases
for i = 0 to n
for j = 0 to m
table[i][j] = table[i-S[j]][j] + table[i][j-1]
This is a pretty standard O(n^2) algorithm that avoids recalculating the same answer multiple times by using a 2-D array.
My issue is two-fold:
How to define the base cases and incorporate them in table[][] as initial values
How to extract out the different sequences from the table
Regarding issue 1, there are three base cases with this algorithm:
if n==0, return 1
if n < 0, return 0
if n >= 1 && m <= 0, return 0
How to incorporate them into table[][], I am not sure. Finally, I have no idea how to extract out the solution set from the array.
We can implement a dynamic programming algorithm in at least two different approaches. One is the top-down approach using memoization, the other is the bottom-up iterative approach.
For a beginner to dynamic programming, I would always recommend using the top-down approach first since this will help them understand the recurrence relationships in dynamic programming.
So in order to solve the coin changing problem, you've already understood what the recurrence relationship says:
table[i][j] = table[i-S[j]][j] + table[i][j-1]
Such a recurrence relationship is good but is not that well-defined since it doesn't have any boundary conditions. Therefore, we need to define boundary conditions in order to ensure the recurrence relationship could successfully terminate without going into an infinite loop.
So what will happen when we try to go down the recursive tree?
If we need to calculate table[i][j], which means the number of approaches to change i using coins from type 0 to j, there are several corner cases we need to handle:
1) What if j == 0?
If j == 0 we will try to solve the sub-problem table(i,j-1), which is not a valid sub-problem. Therefore, one boundary condition is:
if(j==0) {
if(i==0) table[i][j] = 1;
else table[i][j] = 0;
}
2) What if i - S[j] < 0?
We also need to handle this boundary case and we know in such a condition we should either not try to solve this sub-problem or initialize table(i-S[j],j) = 0 for all of these cases.
So in all, if we are going to implement this dynamic programming from a top-down memoization approach, we can do something like this:
int f(int i, int j) {
if(calc[i][j]) return table[i][j];
calc[i][j] = true;
if(j==0) {
if(i==0) return table[i][j]=1;
else return table[i][j]=0;
}
if(i>=S[j])
return table[i][j]=table[i-S[j][j]+table[i][j-1];
else
return table[i][j]=table[i][j-1];
}
In practice, it's also possible that we use the value of table arrays to help track whether this sub-problem has been calculated before (e.g. we can initialize a value of -1 means this sub-problem hasn't been calculated).
Hope the answer is clear. :)

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