This the GFG Link
In this link, I am not able to get anything intuition that how we are calculating the number of 2 as a digit in,
My doubt is if we are counting the 6000 digits in the range as explained in the below description then why we are simply dividing the number by 10 and returning it, If anyone can help me, please do post your answer with examples
Case digits < 2
Consider the value x = 61523 and digit at index d = 3 (here indexes are considered from right and rightmost index is 0). We observe that x[d] = 1. There are 2s at the 3rd digit in the ranges 2000 – 2999, 12000 – 12999, 22000 – 22999, 32000 32999, 42000 – 42999, and 52000 – 52999. So there are 6000 2’s total in the 3rd digit. This is the same amount as if we were just counting all the 2s in the 3rd digit between 1 and 60000.
In other words, we can round down to the nearest 10d+1, and then divide by 10, to compute the number of 2s in the d-th digit.
if x[d) < 2: count2sinRangeAtDigit(x, d) =
Compute y = round down to nearest 10d+1
return y/10
Case digit > 2
Now, let’s look at the case where d-th digit (from right) of x is greater than 2 (x[d] > 2). We can apply almost the exact same logic to see that there are the same number of 2s in the 3rd digit in the range 0 – 63525 as there as in the range 0 – 70000. So, rather than rounding down, we round up.
if x[d) > 2: count2sinRangeAtDigit(x, d) =
Compute y = round down to nearest 10d+1
return y / 10
Case digit = 2
The final case may be the trickiest, but it follows from the earlier logic. Consider x = 62523 and d = 3. We know that there are the same ranges of 2s from before (that is, the ranges 2000 – 2999, 12000 – 12999, … , 52000 – 52999). How many appear in the 3rd digit in the final, partial range from 62000 – 62523? Well, that should be pretty easy. It’s just 524 (62000, 62001, … , 62523).
if x[d] = 2: count2sinRangeAtDigit(x, d) =
Compute y = round down to nearest 10d+1
Compute z = right side of x (i.e., x% 10d)
return y/10 + z + 1**// here why we are doing it ,what is the logic behind this approach**
There is not complete clarity in the explantion given above that's why I am asking here Thank you
For me that explanation is strange too. Also note that true complexity is O(log(n)) because it depends on nummber length (digit count).
Consider the next example: we have number 6125.
At the first round we need to calculate how many 2's are met as the rightmost digit in all numbers from 0 to 6125. We round number down to 6120 and up to 6130. Last digit is 5>2, so we have 613 intervals, every interval contains one digit 2 as the last digit - here we count last 2's in numbers like 2,12,22,..1352,..,6122.
At the second round we need to calculate how many 2's are met as the second (from right) digit in all numbers from 0 to 6125. We round number down to 6100 and up to 6200. Also we have right=5. Digit is 2, so we have 61 intervals, every interval contains ten digits 2 at the second place (20..29, 120..129... 6020..6029). We add 61*10. Also we have to add 5+1 2's for values 6120..6125
At the third round we need to calculate how many 2's are met as the third (from right) digit in all numbers from 0 to 6125. We round number down to 6000 and up to 7000. Digit is 1, so we have 6 intervals, every interval contains one hundred of digit 2 at the third place (200.299.. 5200..5299). So add 6*100.
I think it is clear now that we add 1 interval with thousand of 2's (2000.2999) as the leftmost digit (6>2)
Minimizing Tile Re-ordering Problem:
Suppose I had the following symmetric 9x9 matrix, N^2 interactions between N particles:
(1,2) (2,9) (4,5) (4,6) (5,8) (7,8),
These are symmetric interactions, so it implicitly implies that there exists:
(2,1) (9,2) (5,4) (6,4) (8,5) (8,7),
In my problem, suppose they are arranged in matrix form, where only the upper triangle is shown:
t 0 1 2 (tiles)
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 [ 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ]
0 2 [ x 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ]
3 [ x x 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ]
4 [ x x x 0 1 1 0 0 0 ]
1 5 [ x x x x 0 0 0 1 0 ]
6 [ x x x x x 0 0 0 0 ]
7 [ x x x x x x 0 1 0 ]
2 8 [ x x x x x x x 0 0 ]
9 [ x x x x x x x x 0 ] (x's denote symmetric pair)
I have some operation that's computed in 3x3 tiles, and any 3x3 that contains at least a single 1 must be computed entirely. The above example requires at least 5 tiles: (0,0), (0,2), (1,1), (1,2), (2,2)
However, if I swap the 3rd and 9th columns (and along with the rows since its a symmetric matrix) by permutating my input:
t 0 1 2
# 1 2 9 4 5 6 7 8 3
1 [ 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ]
0 2 [ x 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 ]
9 [ x x 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ]
4 [ x x x 0 1 1 0 0 0 ]
1 5 [ x x x x 0 0 0 1 0 ]
6 [ x x x x x 0 0 0 0 ]
7 [ x x x x x x 0 1 0 ]
2 8 [ x x x x x x x 0 0 ]
3 [ x x x x x x x x 0 ] (x's denote symmetric pair)
Now I only need to compute 4 tiles: (0,0), (1,1), (1,2), (2,2).
The General Problem:
Given an NxN sparse matrix, finding an re-ordering to minimize the number of TxT tiles that must be computed. Suppose that N is a multiple of T. An optimal, but unfeasible, solution can be found by trying out the N! permutations of the input ordering.
For heuristics, I've tried bandwidth minimization routines (such as Reverse CutHill McKee), Tim Davis' AMD routines, so far to no avail. I don't think diagonalization is the right approach here.
Here's a sample starting matrix:
http://proteneer.com/misc/out2.dat
Hilbert Curve:
RCM:
Morton Curve:
There are several well-known options you can try (some of them you have, but still):
(Reverse) Cuthill-McKee reduced the matrix bandwidth, keeping the entries close to the diagonal.
Approximage Minimum Degree - a light-weight fill-reducing reordering.
fill-reducing reordering for sparse LU/LL' decomposition (METIS, SCOTCH) - quite computationally heavy.
space filling curve reordering (something in these lines)
quad-trees for 2D or oct-trees for 3D problems - you assign the particles to quads/octants and later number them according to the quad/octant id, similar to space filling curves in a sense.
Self Avoiding Walk is used on structured grids to traverse the grid points in such order that all points are only visited once
a lot of research in blocking of the sparse matrix entries has been done in the context of Sparse Matrix-Vector multiplication. Many of the researchers have tried to find good reordering for that purpose (I do not have the perfect overview on that subject, but have a look at e.g. this paper)
All of those tend to find structure in your matrix and in some sense group the non-zero entries. Since you say you deal with particles, it means that your connectivity graph is in some sense 'local' because of spatial locality of the particle interactions. In this case these methods should be of good use.
Of course, they do not provide the exact solution to the problem :) But they are commonly used in exactly such cases because they yield very good reorderings in practice. I wonder what do you mean by saying the methods you tried failed? Do you expect to find the optimum solution? Surely, they improve the situation compared to a random matrix ordering.
Edit Let me briefly go through a few pictures. I have created a 3D structured cartesian mesh composed of 20-node brick elements. I matched the size of the mesh so that it is similar to yours (~1000 nodes). Also, number of non-zero entries per row are not too far off (51-81 in my case, 59-81 in your case, both however have very different distributions) The pictures below show RCM and METIS reorderings for non-periodic mesh (left), and for mesh with complete x-y-z periodicity (right):
Next picture shows the same matrix reordered using METIS and fill-reducing reordering
The difference is striking - bad impact of periodicity is clear. Now your matrix reordered with RCM and METIS
WOW. You have a problem :) First of all, I think there is something wrong with your rcm, because mine looks different ;) Also, I am certain that you can not conclude anything general and meaningful about any reordering based on this particular matrix. This is because your system size is very small (less than roughly 10x10x10 points), and you seem to have relatively long-range interactions between your particles. Hence, introducing periodicity into such small system has a much stronger bad effect on reordering than is seen in my structured case.
I would start the search for a good reordering by turning off periodicity. Once you have a reordering that satisfies you, introduce periodic interactions. In the system you showed there is almost nothing but periodicity: because it is very smal and because your interactions are fairly long-range, at least compared to my mesh. In much larger systems periodicity will have a smaller effect on the center of the model.
Smaller, but still negative. Maybe you could change your approach to periodicity? Instead of including periodic connectivities explicitly in the matrix, construct and reorder a matrix without those and introduce explicit equations binding the periodic particles together, e.g.:
V_particle1 = V_particle100
or in other words
V_particle1 - V_particle100 = 0
and add those equations at the end of your matrix. This method is called the Lagrange multipliers. Here is how it looks for my system
You keep the reordering of the non-periodic system and the periodic connectivities are localized in a block at the end of the matrix. Of course, you can use it for any other reorderings.
The next idea is you start with a reordered non-periodic system and explicitly eliminate matrix rows for the periodic nodes by adding them into the rows they are mapped onto. You should of course also eliminate the columns.
Whether you can use these depends on what you do with your matrix. Lagrange multiplier for example introduce 0 on the diagonal - not all solvers like that..
Anyway, this is very interesting research. I think that because of the specifics of your problem (as I understand it - irregularly placed particles in 3D, with fairly long-range interactions) make it very difficult to group the matrix entries. But I am very curious what you end up doing. Please let me know!
You can look for a data structure like kd-tree, R-tree, quadtree or a space filling curve. Especially a space filling curve can help because it reduce the dimension and also reorder the tiles and thus can add some new information to the grid. With a 9x9 grid it's probably good to look into peano curves. The z order morton curve is better for power of 2 grids.
Imagine you sell those metallic digits used to number houses, locker doors, hotel rooms, etc. You need to find how many of each digit to ship when your customer needs to number doors/houses:
1 to 100
51 to 300
1 to 2,000 with zeros to the left
The obvious solution is to do a loop from the first to the last number, convert the counter to a string with or without zeros to the left, extract each digit and use it as an index to increment an array of 10 integers.
I wonder if there is a better way to solve this, without having to loop through the entire integers range.
Solutions in any language or pseudocode are welcome.
Edit:
Answers review
John at CashCommons and Wayne Conrad comment that my current approach is good and fast enough. Let me use a silly analogy: If you were given the task of counting the squares in a chess board in less than 1 minute, you could finish the task by counting the squares one by one, but a better solution is to count the sides and do a multiplication, because you later may be asked to count the tiles in a building.
Alex Reisner points to a very interesting mathematical law that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to be relevant to this problem.
Andres suggests the same algorithm I’m using, but extracting digits with %10 operations instead of substrings.
John at CashCommons and phord propose pre-calculating the digits required and storing them in a lookup table or, for raw speed, an array. This could be a good solution if we had an absolute, unmovable, set in stone, maximum integer value. I’ve never seen one of those.
High-Performance Mark and strainer computed the needed digits for various ranges. The result for one millon seems to indicate there is a proportion, but the results for other number show different proportions.
strainer found some formulas that may be used to count digit for number which are a power of ten.
Robert Harvey had a very interesting experience posting the question at MathOverflow. One of the math guys wrote a solution using mathematical notation.
Aaronaught developed and tested a solution using mathematics. After posting it he reviewed the formulas originated from Math Overflow and found a flaw in it (point to Stackoverflow :).
noahlavine developed an algorithm and presented it in pseudocode.
A new solution
After reading all the answers, and doing some experiments, I found that for a range of integer from 1 to 10n-1:
For digits 1 to 9, n*10(n-1) pieces are needed
For digit 0, if not using leading zeros, n*10n-1 - ((10n-1) / 9) are needed
For digit 0, if using leading zeros, n*10n-1 - n are needed
The first formula was found by strainer (and probably by others), and I found the other two by trial and error (but they may be included in other answers).
For example, if n = 6, range is 1 to 999,999:
For digits 1 to 9 we need 6*105 = 600,000 of each one
For digit 0, without leading zeros, we need 6*105 – (106-1)/9 = 600,000 - 111,111 = 488,889
For digit 0, with leading zeros, we need 6*105 – 6 = 599,994
These numbers can be checked using High-Performance Mark results.
Using these formulas, I improved the original algorithm. It still loops from the first to the last number in the range of integers, but, if it finds a number which is a power of ten, it uses the formulas to add to the digits count the quantity for a full range of 1 to 9 or 1 to 99 or 1 to 999 etc. Here's the algorithm in pseudocode:
integer First,Last //First and last number in the range
integer Number //Current number in the loop
integer Power //Power is the n in 10^n in the formulas
integer Nines //Nines is the resut of 10^n - 1, 10^5 - 1 = 99999
integer Prefix //First digits in a number. For 14,200, prefix is 142
array 0..9 Digits //Will hold the count for all the digits
FOR Number = First TO Last
CALL TallyDigitsForOneNumber WITH Number,1 //Tally the count of each digit
//in the number, increment by 1
//Start of optimization. Comments are for Number = 1,000 and Last = 8,000.
Power = Zeros at the end of number //For 1,000, Power = 3
IF Power > 0 //The number ends in 0 00 000 etc
Nines = 10^Power-1 //Nines = 10^3 - 1 = 1000 - 1 = 999
IF Number+Nines <= Last //If 1,000+999 < 8,000, add a full set
Digits[0-9] += Power*10^(Power-1) //Add 3*10^(3-1) = 300 to digits 0 to 9
Digits[0] -= -Power //Adjust digit 0 (leading zeros formula)
Prefix = First digits of Number //For 1000, prefix is 1
CALL TallyDigitsForOneNumber WITH Prefix,Nines //Tally the count of each
//digit in prefix,
//increment by 999
Number += Nines //Increment the loop counter 999 cycles
ENDIF
ENDIF
//End of optimization
ENDFOR
SUBROUTINE TallyDigitsForOneNumber PARAMS Number,Count
REPEAT
Digits [ Number % 10 ] += Count
Number = Number / 10
UNTIL Number = 0
For example, for range 786 to 3,021, the counter will be incremented:
By 1 from 786 to 790 (5 cycles)
By 9 from 790 to 799 (1 cycle)
By 1 from 799 to 800
By 99 from 800 to 899
By 1 from 899 to 900
By 99 from 900 to 999
By 1 from 999 to 1000
By 999 from 1000 to 1999
By 1 from 1999 to 2000
By 999 from 2000 to 2999
By 1 from 2999 to 3000
By 1 from 3000 to 3010 (10 cycles)
By 9 from 3010 to 3019 (1 cycle)
By 1 from 3019 to 3021 (2 cycles)
Total: 28 cycles
Without optimization: 2,235 cycles
Note that this algorithm solves the problem without leading zeros. To use it with leading zeros, I used a hack:
If range 700 to 1,000 with leading zeros is needed, use the algorithm for 10,700 to 11,000 and then substract 1,000 - 700 = 300 from the count of digit 1.
Benchmark and Source code
I tested the original approach, the same approach using %10 and the new solution for some large ranges, with these results:
Original 104.78 seconds
With %10 83.66
With Powers of Ten 0.07
A screenshot of the benchmark application:
(source: clarion.sca.mx)
If you would like to see the full source code or run the benchmark, use these links:
Complete Source code (in Clarion): http://sca.mx/ftp/countdigits.txt
Compilable project and win32 exe: http://sca.mx/ftp/countdigits.zip
Accepted answer
noahlavine solution may be correct, but l just couldn’t follow the pseudo code, I think there are some details missing or not completely explained.
Aaronaught solution seems to be correct, but the code is just too complex for my taste.
I accepted strainer’s answer, because his line of thought guided me to develop this new solution.
There's a clear mathematical solution to a problem like this. Let's assume the value is zero-padded to the maximum number of digits (it's not, but we'll compensate for that later), and reason through it:
From 0-9, each digit occurs once
From 0-99, each digit occurs 20 times (10x in position 1 and 10x in position 2)
From 0-999, each digit occurs 300 times (100x in P1, 100x in P2, 100x in P3)
The obvious pattern for any given digit, if the range is from 0 to a power of 10, is N * 10N-1, where N is the power of 10.
What if the range is not a power of 10? Start with the lowest power of 10, then work up. The easiest case to deal with is a maximum like 399. We know that for each multiple of 100, each digit occurs at least 20 times, but we have to compensate for the number of times it appears in the most-significant-digit position, which is going to be exactly 100 for digits 0-3, and exactly zero for all other digits. Specifically, the extra amount to add is 10N for the relevant digits.
Putting this into a formula, for upper bounds that are 1 less than some multiple of a power of 10 (i.e. 399, 6999, etc.) it becomes: M * N * 10N-1 + iif(d <= M, 10N, 0)
Now you just have to deal with the remainder (which we'll call R). Take 445 as an example. This is whatever the result is for 399, plus the range 400-445. In this range, the MSD occurs R more times, and all digits (including the MSD) also occur at the same frequencies they would from range [0 - R].
Now we just have to compensate for the leading zeros. This pattern is easy - it's just:
10N + 10N-1 + 10N-2 + ... + **100
Update: This version correctly takes into account "padding zeros", i.e. the zeros in middle positions when dealing with the remainder ([400, 401, 402, ...]). Figuring out the padding zeros is a bit ugly, but the revised code (C-style pseudocode) handles it:
function countdigits(int d, int low, int high) {
return countdigits(d, low, high, false);
}
function countdigits(int d, int low, int high, bool inner) {
if (high == 0)
return (d == 0) ? 1 : 0;
if (low > 0)
return countdigits(d, 0, high) - countdigits(d, 0, low);
int n = floor(log10(high));
int m = floor((high + 1) / pow(10, n));
int r = high - m * pow(10, n);
return
(max(m, 1) * n * pow(10, n-1)) + // (1)
((d < m) ? pow(10, n) : 0) + // (2)
(((r >= 0) && (n > 0)) ? countdigits(d, 0, r, true) : 0) + // (3)
(((r >= 0) && (d == m)) ? (r + 1) : 0) + // (4)
(((r >= 0) && (d == 0)) ? countpaddingzeros(n, r) : 0) - // (5)
(((d == 0) && !inner) ? countleadingzeros(n) : 0); // (6)
}
function countleadingzeros(int n) {
int tmp= 0;
do{
tmp= pow(10, n)+tmp;
--n;
}while(n>0);
return tmp;
}
function countpaddingzeros(int n, int r) {
return (r + 1) * max(0, n - max(0, floor(log10(r))) - 1);
}
As you can see, it's gotten a bit uglier but it still runs in O(log n) time, so if you need to handle numbers in the billions, this will still give you instant results. :-) And if you run it on the range [0 - 1000000], you get the exact same distribution as the one posted by High-Performance Mark, so I'm almost positive that it's correct.
FYI, the reason for the inner variable is that the leading-zero function is already recursive, so it can only be counted in the first execution of countdigits.
Update 2: In case the code is hard to read, here's a reference for what each line of the countdigits return statement means (I tried inline comments but they made the code even harder to read):
Frequency of any digit up to highest power of 10 (0-99, etc.)
Frequency of MSD above any multiple of highest power of 10 (100-399)
Frequency of any digits in remainder (400-445, R = 45)
Additional frequency of MSD in remainder
Count zeros in middle position for remainder range (404, 405...)
Subtract leading zeros only once (on outermost loop)
I'm assuming you want a solution where the numbers are in a range, and you have the starting and ending number. Imagine starting with the start number and counting up until you reach the end number - it would work, but it would be slow. I think the trick to a fast algorithm is to realize that in order to go up one digit in the 10^x place and keep everything else the same, you need to use all of the digits before it 10^x times plus all digits 0-9 10^(x-1) times. (Except that your counting may have involved a carry past the x-th digit - I correct for this below.)
Here's an example. Say you're counting from 523 to 1004.
First, you count from 523 to 524. This uses the digits 5, 2, and 4 once each.
Second, count from 524 to 604. The rightmost digit does 6 cycles through all of the digits, so you need 6 copies of each digit. The second digit goes through digits 2 through 0, 10 times each. The third digit is 6 5 times and 5 100-24 times.
Third, count from 604 to 1004. The rightmost digit does 40 cycles, so add 40 copies of each digit. The second from right digit doers 4 cycles, so add 4 copies of each digit. The leftmost digit does 100 each of 7, 8, and 9, plus 5 of 0 and 100 - 5 of 6. The last digit is 1 5 times.
To speed up the last bit, look at the part about the rightmost two places. It uses each digit 10 + 1 times. In general, 1 + 10 + ... + 10^n = (10^(n+1) - 1)/9, which we can use to speed up counting even more.
My algorithm is to count up from the start number to the end number (using base-10 counting), but use the fact above to do it quickly. You iterate through the digits of the starting number from least to most significant, and at each place you count up so that that digit is the same as the one in the ending number. At each point, n is the number of up-counts you need to do before you get to a carry, and m the number you need to do afterwards.
Now let's assume pseudocode counts as a language. Here, then, is what I would do:
convert start and end numbers to digit arrays start[] and end[]
create an array counts[] with 10 elements which stores the number of copies of
each digit that you need
iterate through start number from right to left. at the i-th digit,
let d be the number of digits you must count up to get from this digit
to the i-th digit in the ending number. (i.e. subtract the equivalent
digits mod 10)
add d * (10^i - 1)/9 to each entry in count.
let m be the numerical value of all the digits to the right of this digit,
n be 10^i - m.
for each digit e from the left of the starting number up to and including the
i-th digit, add n to the count for that digit.
for j in 1 to d
increment the i-th digit by one, including doing any carries
for each digit e from the left of the starting number up to and including
the i-th digit, add 10^i to the count for that digit
for each digit e from the left of the starting number up to and including the
i-th digit, add m to the count for that digit.
set the i-th digit of the starting number to be the i-th digit of the ending
number.
Oh, and since the value of i increases by one each time, keep track of your old 10^i and just multiply it by 10 to get the new one, instead of exponentiating each time.
To reel of the digits from a number, we'd only ever need to do a costly string conversion if we couldnt do a mod, digits can most quickly be pushed of a number like this:
feed=number;
do
{ digit=feed%10;
feed/=10;
//use digit... eg. digitTally[digit]++;
}
while(feed>0)
that loop should be very fast and can just be placed inside a loop of the start to end numbers for the simplest way to tally the digits.
To go faster, for larger range of numbers, im looking for an optimised method of tallying all digits from 0 to number*10^significance
(from a start to end bazzogles me)
here is a table showing digit tallies of some single significant digits..
these are inclusive of 0, but not the top value itself, -that was an oversight
but its maybe a bit easier to see patterns (having the top values digits absent here)
These tallies dont include trailing zeros,
1 10 100 1000 10000 2 20 30 40 60 90 200 600 2000 6000
0 1 1 10 190 2890 1 2 3 4 6 9 30 110 490 1690
1 0 1 20 300 4000 1 12 13 14 16 19 140 220 1600 2800
2 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 13 14 16 19 40 220 600 2800
3 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 14 16 19 40 220 600 2800
4 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 16 19 40 220 600 2800
5 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 16 19 40 220 600 2800
6 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 6 19 40 120 600 1800
7 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 6 19 40 120 600 1800
8 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 6 19 40 120 600 1800
9 0 1 20 300 4000 0 2 3 4 6 9 40 120 600 1800
edit: clearing up my origonal
thoughts:
from the brute force table showing
tallies from 0 (included) to
poweroTen(notinc) it is visible that
a majordigit of tenpower:
increments tally[0 to 9] by md*tp*10^(tp-1)
increments tally[1 to md-1] by 10^tp
decrements tally[0] by (10^tp - 10)
(to remove leading 0s if tp>leadingzeros)
can increment tally[moresignificantdigits] by self(md*10^tp)
(to complete an effect)
if these tally adjustments were applied for each significant digit,
the tally should be modified as though counted from 0 to end-1
the adjustments can be inverted to remove preceeding range (start number)
Thanks Aaronaught for your complete and tested answer.
Here's a very bad answer, I'm ashamed to post it. I asked Mathematica to tally the digits used in all numbers from 1 to 1,000,000, no leading 0s. Here's what I got:
0 488895
1 600001
2 600000
3 600000
4 600000
5 600000
6 600000
7 600000
8 600000
9 600000
Next time you're ordering sticky digits for selling in your hardware store, order in these proportions, you won't be far wrong.
I asked this question on Math Overflow, and got spanked for asking such a simple question. One of the users took pity on me and said if I posted it to The Art of Problem Solving, he would answer it; so I did.
Here is the answer he posted:
http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=1741600#1741600
Embarrassingly, my math-fu is inadequate to understand what he posted (the guy is 19 years old...that is so depressing). I really need to take some math classes.
On the bright side, the equation is recursive, so it should be a simple matter to turn it into a recursive function with a few lines of code, by someone who understands the math.
I know this question has an accepted answer but I was tasked with writing this code for a job interview and I think I came up with an alternative solution that is fast, requires no loops and can use or discard leading zeroes as required.
It is in fact quite simple but not easy to explain.
If you list out the first n numbers
1
2
3
.
.
.
9
10
11
It is usual to start counting the digits required from the start room number to the end room number in a left to right fashion, so for the above we have one 1, one 2, one 3 ... one 9, two 1's one zero, four 1's etc. Most solutions I have seen used this approach with some optimisation to speed it up.
What I did was to count vertically in columns, as in hundreds, tens, and units. You know the highest room number so we can calculate how many of each digit there are in the hundreds column via a single division, then recurse and calculate how many in the tens column etc. Then we can subtract the leading zeros if we like.
Easier to visualize if you use Excel to write out the numbers but use a separate column for each digit of the number
A B C
- - -
0 0 1 (assuming room numbers do not start at zero)
0 0 2
0 0 3
.
.
.
3 6 4
3 6 5
.
.
.
6 6 9
6 7 0
6 7 1
^
sum in columns not rows
So if the highest room number is 671 the hundreds column will have 100 zeroes vertically, followed by 100 ones and so on up to 71 sixes, ignore 100 of the zeroes if required as we know these are all leading.
Then recurse down to the tens and perform the same operation, we know there will be 10 zeroes followed by 10 ones etc, repeated six times, then the final time down to 2 sevens. Again can ignore the first 10 zeroes as we know they are leading. Finally of course do the units, ignoring the first zero as required.
So there are no loops everything is calculated with division. I use recursion for travelling "up" the columns until the max one is reached (in this case hundreds) and then back down totalling as it goes.
I wrote this in C# and can post code if anyone interested, haven't done any benchmark timings but it is essentially instant for values up to 10^18 rooms.
Could not find this approach mentioned here or elsewhere so thought it might be useful for someone.
Your approach is fine. I'm not sure why you would ever need anything faster than what you've described.
Or, this would give you an instantaneous solution: Before you actually need it, calculate what you would need from 1 to some maximum number. You can store the numbers needed at each step. If you have a range like your second example, it would be what's needed for 1 to 300, minus what's needed for 1 to 50.
Now you have a lookup table that can be called at will. Doing up to 10,000 would only take a few MB and, what, a few minutes to compute, once?
This doesn't answer your exact question, but it's interesting to note the distribution of first digits according to Benford's Law. For example, if you choose a set of numbers at random, 30% of them will start with "1", which is somewhat counter-intuitive.
I don't know of any distributions describing subsequent digits, but you might be able to determine this empirically and come up with a simple formula for computing an approximate number of digits required for any range of numbers.
If "better" means "clearer," then I doubt it. If it means "faster," then yes, but I wouldn't use a faster algorithm in place of a clearer one without a compelling need.
#!/usr/bin/ruby1.8
def digits_for_range(min, max, leading_zeros)
bins = [0] * 10
format = [
'%',
('0' if leading_zeros),
max.to_s.size,
'd',
].compact.join
(min..max).each do |i|
s = format % i
for digit in s.scan(/./)
bins[digit.to_i] +=1 unless digit == ' '
end
end
bins
end
p digits_for_range(1, 49, false)
# => [4, 15, 15, 15, 15, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5]
p digits_for_range(1, 49, true)
# => [13, 15, 15, 15, 15, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5]
p digits_for_range(1, 10000, false)
# => [2893, 4001, 4000, 4000, 4000, 4000, 4000, 4000, 4000, 4000]
Ruby 1.8, a language known to be "dog slow," runs the above code in 0.135 seconds. That includes loading the interpreter. Don't give up an obvious algorithm unless you need more speed.
If you need raw speed over many iterations, try a lookup table:
Build an array with 2 dimensions: 10 x max-house-number
int nDigits[10000][10] ; // Don't try this on the stack, kids!
Fill each row with the count of digits required to get to that number from zero.
Hint: Use the previous row as a start:
n=0..9999:
if (n>0) nDigits[n] = nDigits[n-1]
d=0..9:
nDigits[n][d] += countOccurrencesOf(n,d) //
Number of digits "between" two numbers becomes simple subtraction.
For range=51 to 300, take the counts for 300 and subtract the counts for 50.
0's = nDigits[300][0] - nDigits[50][0]
1's = nDigits[300][1] - nDigits[50][1]
2's = nDigits[300][2] - nDigits[50][2]
3's = nDigits[300][3] - nDigits[50][3]
etc.
You can separate each digit (look here for a example), create a histogram with entries from 0..9 (which will count how many digits appeared in a number) and multiply by the number of 'numbers' asked.
But if isn't what you are looking for, can you give a better example?
Edited:
Now I think I got the problem. I think you can reckon this (pseudo C):
int histogram[10];
memset(histogram, 0, sizeof(histogram));
for(i = startNumber; i <= endNumber; ++i)
{
array = separateDigits(i);
for(j = 0; k < array.length; ++j)
{
histogram[k]++;
}
}
Separate digits implements the function in the link.
Each position of the histogram will have the amount of each digit. For example
histogram[0] == total of zeros
histogram[1] == total of ones
...
Regards