I just want a direction in this programming problem from an online judge (URI online judge - 2699).
Given two numbers, S and N, S is incomplete, so S can be given in the form ?294?? where the first digit is not zero, I need to find the minimum number that has the same digits as S and is multiple of N. If is not possible, then you just return a *. S can have up to 1000 digits and N < 1000.
I will describe my attempts:
Brute Force: I try every combination of numbers and get the first one to be multiple of N. Finding a solution when it exists is not the problem at all, but discovering that does not exist a solution when S is big can be really problematic and take infinite time.
Brute Force but optimizing the form of finding the rest: This attempt i save into an array the rest of the division for the digit 1 in the i position, so for i = 3, in v[3] i will have 1000%N. Knowing that (AB) MOD N = ((A MOD N)B) MOD N it's possible to write an array pretty quick and optimize the way i calculate the Mod of S which. This attempt does improve the time but is a Brute Force Attempt and has the same issues that the previous one.
Using the remainder to do the recursion: Ex: If i have the number
?294?? in S, i get the remainder of 29400 and calculate how much is needed to have a multiple (N - rem), then i try to get it all from the first digit, if it is not possible then i decrease how much I want and try again, then I go to the left and try with another number. Ex if i need 7 to reach N and can get 5 with the first digit, then I will try to find 2 within the second digit and so on.
Does it have a concept that i ain't seeing here ? I'm trying this problem for almost 3 days, searching ways to do this and not getting anywhere because of time.
EDIT: Thanks for the comments, after thinking all day about this problem and reading a lot of Dynamic Programming I could figure a way to apply DP in this problem, I won't say exactly how but the key is to understand DP and figure a way to reduce the size of your problem.
Which way should I follow to create an algorithm to find out whether fibonacci sequence exists in a given string ?
The string includes only digits with no whitespaces and there may be more than one sequence, I need to find all of them.
If as your comment says the first number must have less than 6 digits, you can simply search for all positions there one of the 25 fibonacci numbers (there are only 25 with less than 6 digits) and than try to expand this 1 number sequence in both directions.
After your update:
You can even speed things up when you are only looking for sequences of at least 3 numbers.
Prebuild all 25 3-number-Strings that start with one of the 25 first fibonnaci-numbers this should give much less matches than the search for the single fibonacci-numbers I suggested above.
Than search for them (like described above and try to expand the found 3-number-sequences).
here's how I would approach this.
The main algorithm could search for triplets then try to extend them to as long a sequence as possible.
This leaves us with the subproblem of finding triplets. So if you are scanning through a string to look for fibonacci numbers, one thing you can take advantage of is that the next number must have the same number of digits or one more digit.
e.g. if you have the string "987159725844" and are considering "[987]159725844" then the next thing you need to look at is "987[159]725844" and "987[1597]25844". Then the next part you would find is "[2584]4" or "[25844]".
Once you have the 3 numbers you can check if they form an arithmetic progression with C - B == B - A. If they do you can now check if they are from the fibonacci sequence by seeing if the ratio is roughly 1.6 and then running the fibonacci iteration backwards down to the initial conditions 1,1.
The overall algorithm would then work by scanning through looking for all triples starting with width 1, then width 2, width 3 up to 6.
I'd say you should first find all interesting Fibonacci items (which, having 6 or less digits, are no more than 30) and store them into an array.
Then, loop every position in your input string, and try to find upon there the longest possible Fibonacci number (that is, you must browse the array backwards).
If some Fib number is found, then you must bifurcate to a secondary algorithm, consisting of merely going through the array from current position to the end, trying to match every item in the following substring. When the matching ends, you must get back to the main algorithm to keep searching in the input string from the current position.
None of these two algorithms is recursive, nor too expensive.
update
Ok. If no tables are allowed, you could still use this approach replacing in the first loop the way to get the bext Fibo number: Instead of indexing, apply your formula.
I've received a question to solve. I've manage to solved it by hand but couldn't find an exact algorithm to solved it.
The question:
The user insert a 4 digits number without repetition of any of the digits (can have a leading 0).
The algorithm needs to find this number.
There is a check function that received a 4 digits number and returns how many numbers were correct, and how many of the numbers were in the correct place without overlap, and without mentioning which one is.
The system has 7 tries.
For example:
The user insert the Number: 0584
If the system sends the number: 6549
The return would be:
1 item in place
1 item is correct
I would try to solve this puzzle in 2 steps:
Try to find out which 4 digits the solution contains of.
For the miss-placed positions find the right order.
I'm not sure if there is an algorithm to always find the solution within 7 requests, but this way you should at least get closer to a solution.
It's a puzzle, so think about digit-patters that reveal as much information about the solution as possible. And try to extract as much information from the answer to reduce the number of still possible solutions.
Problem:
The numbers from 1 to 10 are given. Put the equal sign(somewhere between
them) and any arithmetic operator {+ - * /} so that a perfect integer
equality is obtained(both the final result and the partial results must be
integer)
Example:
1*2*3*4*5/6+7=8+9+10
1*2*3*4*5/6+7-8=9+10
My first idea to resolve this was using backtracking:
Generate all possibilities of putting operators between the numbers
For one such possibility replace all the operators, one by one, with the equal sign and check if we have two equal results
But this solution takes a lot of time.
So, my question is: Is there a faster solution, maybe something that uses the operator properties or some other cool math trick ?
I'd start with the equals sign. Pick a possible location for that, and split your sequence there. For left and right side independently, find all possible results you could get for each, and store them in a dict. Then match them up later on.
Finding all 226 solutions took my Python program, based on this approach, less than 0.15 seconds. So there certainly is no need to optimize further, is there? Along the way, I computed a total of 20683 subexpressions for a single side of one equation. They are fairly well balenced: 10327 expressions for left hand sides and 10356 expressions for right hand sides.
If you want to be a bit more clever, you can try reduce the places where you even attempt division. In order to allov for division without remainder, the prime factors of the divisor must be contained in those of the dividend. So the dividend must be some product and that product must contain the factors of number by which you divide. 2, 3, 5 and 7 are prime numbers, so they can never be such divisors. 4 will never have two even numbers before it. So the only possible ways are 2*3*4*5/6, 4*5*6*7/8 and 3*4*5*6*7*8/9. But I'd say it's far easier to check whether a given division is possible as you go, without any need for cleverness.
First off, let me say that this is not homework (I am an A-Level student, this is nothing close to what we problem solve (this is way harder)), but more of a problem I'm trying to suss out to improve my programming logic.
I thought of a scenario where there is an array of random integers, let's for example say 10 integers. The user will input a number he wants to count to, and the algorithm will try and work out what numbers are needed to make that sum. For example if I wanted to make the sum 44 from this array of integers:
myIntegers = array(1, 5, 9, 3, 7, 12, 36, 22, 19, 63);
The output would be:
36 + 3 + 5 = 44
Or something along those lines. I hope I make myself clear. As an added bonus I would like to make the algorithm pick as few numbers as possible to make the required sum, or give out an error if the sum cannot be made with the numbers supplied.
I thought about using recursion and iterating through the array, adding numbers over and over until the sum is met or gone past. But what I can't get my head around is what to do if the algorithm goes past the sum and needs to be selective about what numbers to pick from the array.
I'm not looking for complete code, or a complete algorithm, I just want your opinions on how I should proceed with this and perhaps share a few tips or something. I'll probably start work on this tonight. :P
As I said, not homework. Just me wanting to do something a bit more advanced.
Thanks for any help you're able to offer. :)
You are looking at the Knapsack Problem
The knapsack problem or rucksack problem is a problem in combinatorial optimization: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than a given limit and the total value is as large as possible. It derives its name from the problem faced by someone who is constrained by a fixed-size knapsack and must fill it with the most useful items.
Edit: Your special case is the Subset Sum Problem
Will subset sum do? ;]
This is the classic Knapsack problem that you would see in college level algorithms course (or at least I saw it then). Best to work this out on paper and the solution in code should be relatively easy to work out.
EDIT: One thing to consider is dynamic programming.
Your Problem is related to the subset sum problem.
You have to try all possible combinations in the worst case.
No shortcuts here I'm afraid. In addition to what other people have said, about what specific problem this is etc., here's some practical advice to offer you a starting point:
I would sort the array and given the input sum m, would find the first number in the array less than m, call it n (this is your first possible number for the sum), and start from the highest possible complement (m-n), working your way down.
If you don't find a precise match, pick the highest available, call it o, (that now is your 2nd number) and look for the 3rd one starting from (m-n-o) and work your way down again.
If you don't find a precise match, start with the next number n (index of original n at index-1) and do the same. You can keep doing this until you find a precise match for two numbers. If no match for the sum is found for two numbers, start the process again, but expand it to include a 3rd number. And so on.
That could be done recursively. At least this approach ensures that when you find a match, it will be the one with the least possible numbers in the set forming the total input sum.
Potentially though, worst case, you end up going through the whole lot.
Edit: As Venr correctly points out, my first approach was incorrect. Edited approach to reflect this.
There is a very efficient randomized algorithm for this problem. I know you already accepted an answer, but I'm happy to share anyway, I just hope people will still check this question :).
Let Used = list of numbers that you sum.
Let Unused = list of numbers that you DON'T sum.
Let tmpsum = 0.
Let S = desired sum you want to reach.
for ( each number x you read )
toss a coin:
if it's heads and tmpsum < S
add x to Used
else
add x to Unused
while ( tmpsum != S )
if tmpsum < S
MOVE one random number from Unused to Used
else
MOVE one random number from Used to Unused
print the Used list, containing the numbers you need to add to get S
This will be much faster than the dynamic programming solution, especially for random inputs. The only problems are that you cannot reliably detect when there is no solution (you could let the algorithm run for a few seconds and if it doesn't finish, assume there is no solution) and that you cannot be sure you will get the solution with minimum number of elements chosen. Again, you could add some logic to make the algorithm keep going and trying to find a solution with less elements until certain stop conditions are met, but this will make it slower. However, if you are only interested in a solution that works and you have a LOT of numbers and the desired sum can be VERY big, this is probably better than the DP algorithm.
Another advantage of this approach is that it will also work for negative and rational numbers with no modifications, which is not true for the DP solution, because the DP solution involves using partial sums as array indexes, and indexes can only be natural numbers. You can of course use hashtables for example, but that will make the DP solution even slower.
I don't know exactly what's this task is called, but it seems that it's kind of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem.
Heh, I'll play the "incomplete specification" card (nobody said that numbers couldn't appear more than once!) and reduce this to the "making change" problem. Sort your numbers in decreasing order, find the first one less than your desired sum, then subtract that from your sum (division and remainders could speed this up). Repeat until sum = 0 or no number less than the sum is found.
For completeness, you would need to keep track of the number of addends in each sum, and of course generate the additional sequences by keeping track of the first number you use, skipping that, and repeating the process with the additional numbers. This would solve the (7 + 2 + 1) over (6 + 4) problem.
Repeating the answer of others: it is a Subset Sum problem.
It could be efficiently solved by Dynamic Programing technique.
The following has not been mentioned yet: the problem is Pseudo-P (or NP-Complete in weak sense).
Existence of an algorithm (based on dynamic programming) polynomial in S (where S is the sum) and n (the number of elements) proves this claim.
Regards.
Ok, I wrote a C++ program to solve the above problem. The algorithm is simple :-)
First of all arrange whatever array you have in descending order(I have hard-coded the array in descending form but you may apply any of the sorting algorithms ).
Next I took three stacks n, pos and sum. The first one stores the number for which a possible sum combination is to be found, the second holds the index of the array from where to start the search, the third stores the elements whose addition will give you the number you enter.
The function looks for the largest number in the array which is smaller than or equal to the number entered. If it is equal, it simply pushes the number onto the sum stack. If not, then it pushes the encountered array element to the sum stack(temporarily), and finds the difference between the number to search for and number encountered, and then it performs recursion.
Let me show an example:-
to find 44 in {63,36,22,19,12,9,7,5,3,1}
first 36 will be pushed in sum(largest number less than 44)
44-36=8 will be pushed in n(next number to search for)
7 will be pushed in sum
8-7=1 will be pushed in n
1 will be pushed in sum
thus 44=36+7+1 :-)
#include <iostream>
#include<conio.h>
using namespace std;
int found=0;
void func(int n[],int pos[],int sum[],int arr[],int &topN,int &topP,int &topS)
{
int i=pos[topP],temp;
while(i<=9)
{
if(arr[i]<=n[topN])
{
pos[topP]=i;
topS++;
sum[topS]=arr[i];
temp=n[topN]-arr[i];
if(temp==0)
{
found=1;
break;
}
topN++;
n[topN]=temp;
temp=pos[topP]+1;
topP++;
pos[topP]=temp;
break;
}
i++;
}
if(i==10)
{
topP=topP-1;
topN=topN-1;
pos[topP]+=1;
topS=topS-1;
if(topP!=-1)
func(n,pos,sum,arr,topN,topP,topS);
}
else if(found!=1)
func(n,pos,sum,arr,topN,topP,topS);
}
main()
{
int x,n[100],pos[100],sum[100],arr[10]={63,36,22,19,12,9,7,5,3,1},topN=-1,topP=-1,topS=-1;
cout<<"Enter a number: ";
cin>>x;
topN=topN+1;
n[topN]=x;
topP=topP+1;
pos[topP]=0;
func(n,pos,sum,arr,topN,topP,topS);
if(found==0)
cout<<"Not found any combination";
else{
cout<<"\n"<<sum[0];
for(int i=1;i<=topS;i++)
cout<<" + "<<sum[i];
}
getch();
}
You can copy the code and paste it in your IDE, works fine :-)