I have a question regarding finding the largest list in a group of lists in scheme.
For example, we define:
(define manylsts (list (list 9 (list 8 7)) 6 (list 5 (list 4 3 2) 1)))
How would I go about finding the largest list in manylsts?
Thank you
You make a procedure that evaluates to zero if it's argument is not a list. (eg. 9), then if its a list you foldl over the elements using length of the argument as accumulator with a lambda that does max between the recursion of the first argument with the accumulator. It would look something like this:
(define (max-children tree)
(if <??>
(foldl (λ (x acc)
(max <??> (max-children <??>)))
(length <??>)
<??>)
0))
Of course there are many ways of doing this, including explicit recursion, but this was the first thing I though of.
I will answer this question as you asked it.
You said you want to
finding the largest list in manylsts
Since you included a non-listed element inside manylsts you want to have a definition that tells you how big is an element (if is a list).
So I wrote the function elemenlen that returns the length of a list if the given element is a list and 0 otherwise.
(define elemenlen
(λ (a)
(if (list? a) (length a) 0)
))
Then I decided I was going to sort them in order of length and then return the first element. So I need a function that returns a boolean value to use it with sort function included in racket/base.
(define list<
(λ (listA listB)
(< (elemenlen listA) (elemenlen listB))))
(define list>
(λ (listA listB)
(not (list< listA listB))))
The first function returns #t if listA is smaller than listB. The second function returns #t if listA is bigger than listB.
Lastly, biggestElement does the whole trick, sorts the elements in list L in descending order (based on length) and returns the first element.
(define biggestElement
(λ (L)
(car (sort L list>)
)))
The function is used like this:
>(biggestElement '((3 2 1) 1 (1 (2 3) 3))
'(1 (2 3) 3)
That is just one way of doing it, there are other ways of doing it, keep it up and tell us if it helped you.
As you see, I decomposed the big problem into little problems. This is a very handy way of doing your DrRacket homework.
Related
"Implement unique, which takes in a list s and returns a new list containing the same elements as s with duplicates removed."
scm> (unique '(1 2 1 3 2 3 1))
(1 2 3)
scm> (unique '(a b c a a b b c))
(a b c)
What I've tried so far is:
(define (unique s)
(cond
((null? s) nil)
(else (cons (car s)(filter ?)
This question required to use the built-in filter function. The general format of filter function is (filter predicate lst), and I was stuck on the predicate part. I am thinking it should be a lambda function. Also, what should I do to solve this question recursively?
(filter predicate list) returns a new list obtained by eliminating all the elements of the list that does not satisfy the predicate. So if you get the first element of the list, to eliminate its duplicates, if they exists, you could simply eliminate from the rest of the list all the elements equal to it, something like:
(filter
(lambda (x) (not (eqv? x (first lst)))) ; what to maintain: all the elements different from (first lst)
(rest lst)) ; the list from which to eleminate it
for instance:
(filter (lambda (x) (not (eqv? x 1))) '(2 1 3 2 1 4))
produces (2 3 2 1 4), eliminating all the occurrences of 1.
Then if you cons the first element with the list resulting from the filter, you are sure that there is only a “copy” of that element in the resulting list.
The last step needed to write your function is to repeat recursively this process. In general, when you have to apply a recursive process, you have to find a terminal case, in which the result of the function can be immediately given (as the empty list for lists), and the general case, in which you express the solution assuming that you have already available the function for a “smaller” input (for instance a list with a lesser number of elements).
Consider this definition:
define (unique s)
(if (null? s)
'()
(cons (first s)
(filter
(lambda (x) (not (eq? x (first s))))
(unique (rest s))))))
(rest s) is a list which has shorter than s. So you can apply unique to it and find a list without duplicates. If, from this list, you remove the duplicates of the first element with filter, and then cons this element at the beginning of the result, you have a list without any duplicate.
And this is a possibile solution to your problem.
Back again with another Racket question. New to higher order functions in general, so give me some leeway.
Currently trying to find the alternating sum using the foldr/foldl functions and not recursion.
e.g. (altsum '(1 3 5 7)) should equal 1 - 3 + 5 - 7, which totals to -4.
I've thought about a few possible ways to tackle this problem:
Get the numbers to add in one list and the numbers to subtract in another list and fold them together.
Somehow use the list length to determine whether to subtract or add.
Maybe generate some sort of '(1 -1 1 -1) mask, multiply respectively, then fold add everything.
However, I have no clue where to start with foldl/foldr when every operation is not the same for every item in the list, so I'm having trouble implementing any of my ideas. Additionally, whenever I try to add more than 2 variables in my foldl's anonymous class, I have no idea what variables afterward refer to what variables in the anonymous class either.
Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.
We can leverage two higher-order procedures here: foldr for processing the list and build-list for generating a list of alternating operations to perform. Notice that foldr can accept more than one input list, in this case we take a list of numbers and a list of operations and iterate over them element-wise, accumulating the result:
(define (altsum lst)
(foldr (lambda (ele op acc) (op acc ele))
0
lst
(build-list (length lst)
(lambda (i) (if (even? i) + -)))))
It works as expected:
(altsum '(1 3 5 7))
=> -4
Your idea is OK. You can use range to make a list of number 0 to length-1 and use the oddness of each to determine + or -:
(define (alt-sum lst)
(foldl (lambda (index e acc)
(define op (if (even? index) + -))
(op acc e))
0
(range (length lst))
lst))
As an alternative one can use SRFI-1 List Library that has fold that allows different length lists as well as infinite lists and together with circular-list you can have it alterate between + and - for the duration of lst.
(require srfi/1) ; For R6RS you import (srfi :1)
(define (alt-sum lst)
(fold (lambda (op n result)
(op result n))
0
(circular-list + -)
lst))
(alt-sum '(1 3 5 7))
; ==> -4
New to scheme but trying to learn the basics.
Let's say I passed a list in as a parameter and I wanted to multiply each element by -1. Right now I have this:
(define (negative b)
(* (car b) -1 )))
Which returns the first element as -1 * that element
So in this case giving it (negative '(5 1 2 3)) returns -5.
But lets say I want it to return
-5 -1 -2 -3
How would I go about making the rest of the list negative? Using cdr recursively?
Do it recursively.
(define (negative l)
(if (null? l)
'()
(cons (* (car l) -1)
(negative (cdr l)))))
If the list is empty, this just returns an empty list, as the base case.
Otherwise, it calculates -1 * the first element, the negative of the rest of the list, and combines them to produce the result.
The purpose of your exercise may be for you to code up your own map procedure, in which case that's fine. But if not, use scheme's built in 'map' procedure which is intended for just this kind of purpose.
'map' has been available at least since R4RS (that is, a long time ago) and possibly earlier.
by using map. If you want it returned as list.
It would be like this
(define negative
(lambda (b)
(map - b)))
Map is going through list b, and apply procedure "-" to each number in list
If you want to return as single numbers not in list you apply values on the list.
(define negative1
(lambda (b)
(apply values (map - b))))
Edit: I saw that you are asking for recursive solution, which would go like this
(define negative1
(lambda (b)
(if (null? b)
'()
(cons (- (car b)) (negative1 (cdr b))))))
I have found the following piece of code that it makes permutation in Scheme. I mean if I enter like arguments '(1 2 3) it will give me:
((1 2 3) (1 3 2) (2 1 3) (2 3 1) (3 1 2) (3 2 1))
The code is the following:
(define (remove x lst)
(cond
((null? lst) '())
((= x (car lst))(remove x (cdr lst)))
(else (cons (car lst) (remove x (cdr lst))))))
(define (permute lst)
(cond
((= (length lst) 1)(list lst))
(else (apply append(map(lambda (i) (map (lambda (j)(cons i j))
(permute (remove i lst))))lst)))))
The first function remove, it seems straightforward that only gets rid of the caracter denoted by x, even if its repeated or not, by comparing it with the beginning of the list and calling recursively with the rest of it.
The part that I quite do not get it, is the permute function. For what I know map appies a function to every element of an argument (in this case a list), and apply just applies one function one time completely to all the arguments. So what is exactly doing this line:
(apply append(map(lambda (i) (map (lambda (j)(cons i j))
(permute (remove i lst))))lst)))))
For me it seems that it just wants to create a pair with two elements: i and j, which they will become a list with the elements permuted (if we take the assumption that a list is just a bunch of concatenated pairs). But the part that calls again to permute and remove with i, what is that part doing? It is just removing the head of the list to generate subsets of the list having the head of the pair, element i, fixed until it runs out of elements?
Any help?
Thanks
Let's pick this apart, going from the inside out. Fix lst and apply the inner expression to one of its elements.
> (define lst '(1 2 3))
> (define i 1)
> (permute (remove i lst))
((2 3) (3 2))
Looks good: the inner expression removes an element and generates permutations of the remainder of the list, recursively. Now map the lambda over these permutations:
> (map (lambda (j) (cons i j)) (permute (remove i lst)))
((1 2 3) (1 3 2))
So the inner map produces all permutations that start with some i, which we've set to 1 here.
The outer map makes sure all permutations are generated by considering all elements of lst as the first element.
> (map (lambda (i) (map (lambda (j) (cons i j))
> (permute (remove i lst))))
> lst)
(((1 2 3) (1 3 2)) ((2 1 3) (2 3 1)) ((3 1 2) (3 2 1)))
But this generates lists with too much nesting. Applying append flattens a list of lists,
> (append '(1 2) '(3 4) '(5 6))
(1 2 3 4 5 6)
> (apply append '((1 2) (3 4) (5 6)))
(1 2 3 4 5 6)
so we get a flat list of permutations out.
I've always found it easier to understand the algorithm on a higher
level before diving into an implementation and trying to understand
what's happening there. So the question is: what are the permutations
of a list, and how would you find them?
The permutations of a single element list are evidently just the list
itself.
The permutations of (a b) are the set [(a b) (b a)].
The permutations of (a b c) are the set
[(a b c) (a c b) (b c a) (b a c) (c a b) (c b a)]
In general there are n! permutations of a list of length n - we have n
choices for the first element, and once we've picked that, (n-1) choices
for the second element, (n-2) for the third element, and so on. This
decrease in the degrees of freedom as we fix more and more of the first
elements of the list is very suggestive: maybe we can represent the
finding the permutations of a list of length n in terms of the
permutations of a list of length (n - 1), and so on until we reach the
permutations of a single-element list.
It turns out that the permutations of a list a precisely the set
[element prepended to the permutations of list \ element, for every
element in list].
Looking at the (a b c) case confirms that this is
true - we have a preceding (b c) and (c b), which are the
permutations of (b c), b preceding (a c) and (c a) and so on. This
operation of prepending the element to the sublist could be defined as
(define (prepend j)
(cons element j))
and the operation of doing it for all the
permutations of the sublist would then be (map prepend (permute
sublist)). Now, defining a new prepend function for each element is
maybe overkill - especially since they all have the same form. So a
better approach is just to use a lambda, which captures the value of
the element under consideration. The desired operation is
then (map (lambda (j) (cons element j)) (permute sublist)). Now, we
want to apply this operation to each element of the list, and the way to
do that is using another map, giving:
(map (lambda (element)
(lambda (j) (cons element j) (permute sublist)))
list)
Now, this looks good, but there is a problem: each stage of the recursion takes single
elements and turns them into a list. That's fine for lists of length 1,
but for longer lists it repeats for every recursive call, and we get
very deeply nested lists. What we really want to do is to put all
these lists on the same footing, which is exactly what the (apply append ...) takes care of. And that's almost all of that line. The only
thing missing is how the sublist is generated in the first place. But
that's easy as well - we'll just use remove, so that sublist = (remove element list). Putting everything together, and we have
(apply append (map (lambda (i)
(lambda (j) (cons i j))
(permute (remove i lst)))
lst))
The base case takes care of the length = 1 case, and all of the others can be found from there
Define a function that takes a non-empty list and returns an element of the list selected at random and with equal probability. (Do not use the built-in list-ref procedure.)
I'm stuck on this. I feel like you would need to count the number of times the function has run recursively and compare it to the random number you get, but I don't know how to do that in BSL+. Any help would be really great.
Here is a solution. To get the ball rolling the first element of the list is chosen as a candidate to be returned. Then for each element of the remaining elements in the list, we randomly choose if the candidate is to be replaced.
For example: For a list with two elements '(a b) first the element 'a is chosen.
The a coin is flipped: With probability 50% 'b is returned instead.
Examine the code to see how the algorithm works for larger lists:
(define (pick-random xs)
(pick-random/helper (rest xs) (first xs) 1))
(define (pick-random/helper xs chosen k)
(cond
[(empty? xs) chosen]
[else ; with probability 1/(k+1) choose the first element of xs
(if (= (random (+ k 1)) 0)
(pick-random/helper (rest xs) (first xs) (+ k 1))
(pick-random/helper (rest xs) chosen (+ k 1)))]))
If you want to google the theory, this type of algorithm belongs to "sampling algorithms".
I take the comment about not using list-ref as a direction to think about the problem recursively.
An assumption is made that 'equal probability' does not take into account the flaws of naive software-based RNGs.
Note that we use []-notation in the function definition to say that steps, unless specified, will have a (default) value of (random (length lst)). This means it will initially have a random amount of 'steps into' the list.
#lang racket
(define (random-element lst [steps (random (length lst))])
(if (= steps 0)
(first lst)
(random-element (rest lst)
(sub1 steps))))
Since steps is internally specified (as (sub1 steps), subtract one from steps) it will always have an explicit value except when the function is applied like so:
(random-element '(42 1337 128 256))
; 256