Shoot balloons and Collect Maximum Points - algorithm

Question

There are 10 balloons and each balloon has some point written onto it. If a customer shoots a balloon, he will get points equal to points on left balloon multiplied by points on the right balloon. A Customer has to collect maximum points in order to win this game. What will be maximum points and in which order should he shoot balloons to get maximum points ?
Please note that if there is only one balloon then you return the points on that balloon.
I am trying to check all 10! permutations in order to find out maximum points. Is there any other way to solve this in efficient way ?

Answer 1

As i said in the comments a Dynamic programming solution with bitmasking is possible, what we can do is keep a bitmask where a 1 at a bit indexed at i means that the ith baloon has been shot, and a 0 tells that it has not been shot.
So a Dynamic Programming state of only mask is required, where at each state we can transition to the next state by iterating over all the ballons that have not been shot and try to shoot them to find the maximum.
The time complexity of such a solution would be : O((2^n) * n * n) and the space complexity would be O(2^n).
Code in c++, it is not debugged you may need to debug it :
int n = 10, val[10], dp[1024]; //set all the values of dp table to -1 initially
int solve(int mask){
if(__builtin_popcount(mask) == n){
return 0;
}
if(dp[mask] != -1) return dp[mask];
int prev = 1, ans = 0;
for(int i = 0;i < n;i++){
if(((mask >> i) & 1) == 0){ //bit is not set
//try to shoot current baloon
int newMask = mask | (1 << i);
int fwd = 1;
for(int j = i+1;j < n;j++){
if(((mask >> j) & 1) == 0){
fwd = val[j];
break;
}
}
ans = max(ans, solve(newMask) + (prev * fwd));
prev = val[i];
}
}
return dp[mask] = ans;
}

Answer 2

#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int findleft(int arr[],int n,int j ,bool isBurst[],bool &found)
{
if(j<=0)
{
found=false;
return 1;
}
for(int i=j-1;i>=0;i--)
{
if(!isBurst[i])
{
return arr[i];
}
}
found = false;
return 1;
}
int findright(int arr[],int n,int j,bool isBurst[],bool &found)
{
if(j>=n)
{
found = false;
return 1;
}
for(int i= j+1;i<=n;i++)
{
if(!isBurst[i])
{
return arr[i];
}
}
found=false;
return 1;
}
int calc(int arr[],int n,int j,bool isBurst[])
{
int points =0;
bool leftfound=true;
bool rightfound=true;
int left= findleft( arr, n-1, j,isBurst , leftfound);
int right = findright( arr,n-1, j,isBurst, rightfound);
if(!leftfound && !rightfound)
{
points+=arr[j];
}
else
{
points+=left*right*arr[j];
}
return points;
}
void maxpoints(int arr[],int n,int cp,int curr_ans,int &ans,int count,bool isBurst[])
{
if(count==n)
{
if(curr_ans>ans)
{
ans=curr_ans;
return;
}
}
for(int i=0;i<n;i++)
{
if(!isBurst[i])
{
isBurst[i]=true;
maxpoints(arr,n,i,curr_ans+calc(arr,n,i,isBurst),ans,count+1,isBurst);
isBurst[i]=false;
}
}
}
int main()
{
int n;
cin>>n;
int ans=0;
int arr[n];
bool isBurst[n];
for(int i=0;i<n;i++)
{
cin>>arr[i];
isBurst[i]=false;
}
maxpoints(arr,n,0,0,ans,0,isBurst);
cout<<ans;
return 0;
}