I have a list of logos (up to 4 color) that need to be printed. Each logo requires a setup time to mix paints needed for that logo. If I can sort the data so that two logos that use the same colors are back to back, then we will not have to mix as many colors saving money and time. Paints have a limited life span once mixed.
I am looking at a dataset like this...
Red | (Other Color)
Red | Black
(Other Color) | Black
It needs to end up in that order. That is the only order that will allow for 1 red to me made and 1 black. I've tried a few things like assigning a value to each common color, but no matter what, I can't seem to get it ordered correctly.
I used the following SQL procedure that someone wrote based on the TSP problem. (http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=172154)
Using the following test data I received the correct output
delete from routes
delete from cities
insert into cities values ('Black|Red')
insert into cities values ('Red')
insert into cities values ('Blue')
insert into cities values ('Black')
insert into cities values ('Blue|Red')
-- Numeric Value is Colors not Matching
insert into routes values ('Black|Red', 'Red', 3)
insert into routes values ('Black|Red', 'Black', 3)
insert into routes values ('Red', 'Black', 4)
insert into routes values ('Blue|Red', 'Red', 3)
insert into routes values ('Blue|Red', 'Black', 4)
insert into routes values ('Blue', 'Red', 4)
insert into routes values ('Blue', 'Black|Red', 4)
insert into routes values ('Blue', 'Black', 4)
insert into routes values ('Blue', 'Blue|Red', 3)
exec getTSPRoute 'Black'
Results:
Black->Black|Red->Red->Blue|Red->Blue->Black
The only issue is running back to the original "city" (Black returned for both the start and the end) and I have to select a "start city." If the wrong one is selected I don't end up with the most optimized route.
It looks like the travelling salesman problem (TSP). Let me explain.
First, consider an example where you have a map with four cities A, B, C and D. (I use 4 in the example but it has nothing to do with the number of colors). You want to find a route between the cities so you (1) visit each city only once and (2) the route is the shortest possible. [D,C,A,B] might be shorter that [B,A,D,C] and you want the shortest one.
Now, instead of the cities you have four logos. You want to find such an ordering of the logos, that yields a minimum cost in terms of color mixing. If you imagine that each of your logos is a point (city), and the distance between the logos is the "cost" of switching between one color set to the other, then you need to find the shortest "route" between the points. Once you have this shortest route, it tells you how you should order the logos. The "distance" between two logos L1 and L2 can be defined, for example, as a number of colors in L2 that are not in L1.
TSP it is a well known algorithmic problem. And it is hard (actually, NP-hard).
If your input is small you can find the best solution. In case of 4 logos, you have 24 posible combinations. For 10 logos, you have 3.6 million combinations and for 20 logos you get 2432902008176640000 combinations (how to read that?). So for inputs larger than 10-15 you need to use some heuristic that finds an approximate solution, which I am sure is enough for you.
What I would do is that I would create a graph of costs of color mixing and feed it to some TSP solver
EDIT:
Clarification. Not each logo is a separate point, but each set of colours in a logo is a point. That is: if you have two logos that have the same set of colours, you consider them as a single point because they will be printed together. Logos with red, blue, black are on point and logos with red, green are another point.
It's rather Hamiltonian path problem than TSP (you don't need to end with the same color set as at the beginning), but it doesn't change much
If there might be no matches in your logos, then first split your logos into disjoint groups that have no matches between them and later consider each group separately. If there are no matches between any of your logos, then you cannot do much :)
Practically, I would use python and maybe networkx library to model your problem as graph, and later I would pass it to some TSP solver. Just format the input and make some other program do all the dirty work.
For a reasonable amount of logos and colors, an easy way would be a brute-force approach in which you go through all the combinations and increase a counter each time mixing is required. After that, you sort combinations by that counter and choose the one with the lowest value.
Pseudocode
foreach combination
foreach print
foreeach color
if not previous_print.contains(color)
cost++
order combination by cost (ascending)
You didn't mention if you are using (or are about to) any kind of tool (spreadsheet, programming language, ...) in which you intended perform this sort.
Edit:
Here's a quick implementation in VB.NET. Note that the code is intentionally left long as to make it easier to read and understand.
Private Sub GoGoGo()
' Adds some logos
' This is where you add them from the database or text file or wherever
Dim logos() =
{
New String() {"Black", "Magenta", "Orange"},
New String() {"Red", "Green", "Blue"},
New String() {"Orange", "Violet", "Pink"},
New String() {"Blue", "Yellow", "Pink"}
}
' Used to store the best combination
Dim minimumPermutation
Dim minimumCost = Integer.MaxValue
' Calculate all permutations of the logos
Dim permutations = GetPermutations(logos)
' For each permutation
For i As Integer = 0 To permutations.Count() - 1
Dim permutation = permutations(i)
Dim cost = 0
' For each logo in permutation
For j As Integer = 0 To permutation.Count() - 1
Dim logo = permutation(j)
' Check whether the previous logo contains one or more colors of this logo
For Each color In logo
If (j > 0) Then
If Not permutation(j - 1).Contains(color) Then
cost += 1
End If
Else
cost += 1
End If
Next
Next
' Save the best permutation
If (i = 0 Or cost < minimumCost) Then
minimumCost = cost
minimumPermutation = permutation.Clone()
End If
Next
' Output the best permutation
For Each logo In minimumPermutation
Console.Write(logo(0) + " " + logo(1) + " " + logo(2))
Next
End Sub
Public Shared Iterator Function GetPermutations(Of T)(values As T(), Optional fromInd As Integer = 0) As IEnumerable(Of T())
If fromInd + 1 = values.Length Then
Yield values
Else
For Each v In GetPermutations(values, fromInd + 1)
Yield v
Next
For i = fromInd + 1 To values.Length - 1
SwapValues(values, fromInd, i)
For Each v In GetPermutations(values, fromInd + 1)
Yield v
Next
SwapValues(values, fromInd, i)
Next
End If
End Function
Private Shared Sub SwapValues(Of T)(values As T(), pos1 As Integer, pos2 As Integer)
If pos1 <> pos2 Then
Dim tmp As T = values(pos1)
values(pos1) = values(pos2)
values(pos2) = tmp
End If
End Sub
I suspect a Genetic Algorithm would be good for this. If you have a lot of logos, a brute force solution could take quite a while, and greedy is unlikely to produce good results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
Related
I recently have encountered a question where I have been given two types of person: Left-handed and Right-handed (writing style). They all are to be seated in a class row and to avoid any disturbance their hands must not collide i.e. pattern may be like LR or LL or RR.
I tried using recursion (taking two branches of L and R for every seat) but number of computations would be very high even for a row size of 100.
Somehow I need to implement DP to reduce the computations. Please suggest.
EDIT:
Actually there is a matrix (like a classroom) in which three types (L R B) of people can be seated with no collisions of hand. I have to generate the maximum number of people that can be seated. Suppose I have a 2x2 matrix and to fill it with Left, Right and Both handed type of persons L=0, R=1 ,B =3 are given. So one valid arrangement would be Row0: B R and row1: B - where - means blank seat.
Actually the fact that you have a matrix doesn't make a difference in the solution you can transform it to an array without losing generality because each state depends on its left or right not its up and down. A bottom-up approach: In each state you have three things L, B and R , index of the seat you want to fill and its left person. Now we can fill the table from right to left. The answer is dp[inedx=0][L][B][R][left_person=' '].
recursive [index][L][B][R][left_person] :
if left_person = ' ' or 'L':
LVal = recursive[index+1][L-1][B][R]['L']
if left_person = ' ' or 'L' or 'R'
RVal = recursive[index+1][L][B][R-1]['R']
if left_person = ' ' or 'L':
BVal = recursive[index+1][L][B-1][R]['B']
NVal = recursive[index+1][L][B][R][' ']
max(LVal, RVal, BVal, NVal) -> dp[index][L][B][R][left_person]
Of course this is not complete and I'm just giving you the genereal idea. You should add some details like the base case and checking if there is anymore person of that kind before assigning it and some other details.
I'm playing a game that has a weapon-forging component, where you combine two weapons to get a new one. The sheer number of weapon combinations (see "6.1. Blade Combination Tables" at http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/914326-vagrant-story/faqs/8485) makes it difficult to figure out what you can ultimately create out of your current weapons through repeated forging, so I tried writing a program that would do this for me. I give it a list of weapons that I currently have, such as:
francisca
tabarzin
kris
and it gives me the list of all weapons that I can forge:
ball mace
chamkaq
dirk
francisca
large crescent
throwing knife
The problem is that I'm using a brute-force algorithm that scales extremely poorly; it takes about 15 seconds to calculate all possible weapons for seven starting weapons, and a few minutes to calculate for eight starting weapons. I'd like it to be able to calculate up to 64 weapons (the maximum that you can hold at once), but I don't think I'd live long enough to see the results.
function find_possible_weapons(source_weapons)
{
for (i in source_weapons)
{
for (j in source_weapons)
{
if (i != j)
{
result_weapon = combine_weapons(source_weapons[i], source_weapons[j]);
new_weapons = array();
new_weapons.add(result_weapon);
for (k in source_weapons)
{
if (k != i && k != j)
new_weapons.add(source_weapons[k]);
}
find_possible_weapons(new_weapons);
}
}
}
}
In English: I attempt every combination of two weapons from my list of source weapons. For each of those combinations, I create a new list of all weapons that I'd have following that combination (that is, the newly-combined weapon plus all of the source weapons except the two that I combined), and then I repeat these steps for the new list.
Is there a better way to do this?
Note that combining weapons in the reverse order can change the result (Rapier + Firangi = Short Sword, but Firangi + Rapier = Spatha), so I can't skip those reversals in the j loop.
Edit: Here's a breakdown of the test example that I gave above, to show what the algorithm is doing. A line in brackets shows the result of a combination, and the following line is the new list of weapons that's created as a result:
francisca,tabarzin,kris
[francisca + tabarzin = chamkaq]
chamkaq,kris
[chamkaq + kris = large crescent]
large crescent
[kris + chamkaq = large crescent]
large crescent
[francisca + kris = dirk]
dirk,tabarzin
[dirk + tabarzin = francisca]
francisca
[tabarzin + dirk = francisca]
francisca
[tabarzin + francisca = chamkaq]
chamkaq,kris
[chamkaq + kris = large crescent]
large crescent
[kris + chamkaq = large crescent]
large crescent
[tabarzin + kris = throwing knife]
throwing knife,francisca
[throwing knife + francisca = ball mace]
ball mace
[francisca + throwing knife = ball mace]
ball mace
[kris + francisca = dirk]
dirk,tabarzin
[dirk + tabarzin = francisca]
francisca
[tabarzin + dirk = francisca]
francisca
[kris + tabarzin = throwing knife]
throwing knife,francisca
[throwing knife + francisca = ball mace]
ball mace
[francisca + throwing knife = ball mace]
ball mace
Also, note that duplicate items in a list of weapons are significant and can't be removed. For example, if I add a second kris to my list of starting weapons so that I have the following list:
francisca
tabarzin
kris
kris
then I'm able to forge the following items:
ball mace
battle axe
battle knife
chamkaq
dirk
francisca
kris
kudi
large crescent
scramasax
throwing knife
The addition of a duplicate kris allowed me to forge four new items that I couldn't before. It also increased the total number of forge tests to 252 for a four-item list, up from 27 for the three-item list.
Edit: I'm getting the feeling that solving this would require more math and computer science knowledge than I have, so I'm going to give up on it. It seemed like a simple enough problem at first, but then, so does the Travelling Salesman. I'm accepting David Eisenstat's answer since the suggestion of remembering and skipping duplicate item lists made such a huge difference in execution time and seems like it would be applicable to a lot of similar problems.
Start by memoizing the brute force solution, i.e., sort source_weapons, make it hashable (e.g., convert to a string by joining with commas), and look it up in a map of input/output pairs. If it isn't there, do the computation as normal and add the result to the map. This often results in big wins for little effort.
Alternatively, you could do a backward search. Given a multiset of weapons, form predecessors by replacing one of the weapon with two weapons that forge it, in all possible ways. Starting with the singleton list consisting of the singleton multiset consisting of the goal weapon, repeatedly expand the list by predecessors of list elements and then cull multisets that are supersets of others. Stop when you reach a fixed point.
If linear programming is an option, then there are systematic ways to prune search trees. In particular, let's make the problem easier by (i) allowing an infinite supply of "catalysts" (maybe not needed here?) (ii) allowing "fractional" forging, e.g., if X + Y => Z, then 0.5 X + 0.5 Y => 0.5 Z. Then there's an LP formulation as follows. For all i + j => k (i and j forge k), the variable x_{ijk} is the number of times this forge is performed.
minimize sum_{i, j => k} x_{ijk} (to prevent wasteful cycles)
for all i: sum_{j, k: j + k => i} x_{jki}
- sum_{j, k: j + i => k} x_{jik}
- sum_{j, k: i + j => k} x_{ijk} >= q_i,
for all i + j => k: x_{ijk} >= 0,
where q_i is 1 if i is the goal item, else minus the number of i initially available. There are efficient solvers for this easy version. Since the reactions are always 2 => 1, you can always recover a feasible forging schedule for an integer solution. Accordingly, I would recommend integer programming for this problem. The paragraph below may still be of interest.
I know shipping an LP solver may be inconvenient, so here's an insight that will let you do without. This LP is feasible if and only if its dual is bounded. Intuitively, the dual problem is to assign a "value" to each item such that, however you forge, the total value of your inventory does not increase. If the goal item is valued at more than the available inventory, then you can't forge it. You can use any method that you can think of to assign these values.
I think you are unlikely to get a good general answer to this question because
if there was an efficient algorithm to solve your problem, then it would also be able to solve NP-complete problems.
For example, consider the problem of finding the maximum number of independent rows in a binary matrix.
This is a known NP-complete problem (e.g. by showing equivalence to the maximum independent set problem).
We can reduce this problem to your question in the following manner:
We can start holding one weapon for each column in the binary matrix, and then we imagine each row describes an alternative way of making a new weapon (say a battle axe).
We construct the weapon translation table such that to make the battle axe using method i, we need all weapons j such that M[i,j] is equal to 1 (this may involve inventing some additional weapons).
Then we construct a series of super weapons which can be made by combining different numbers of our battle axes.
For example, the mega ultimate battle axe may require 4 battle axes to be combined.
If we are able to work out the best weapon that can be constructed from your starting weapons, then we have solved the problem of finding the maximum number of independent rows in the original binary matrix.
It's not a huge saving, however looking at the source document, there are times when combining weapons produces the same weapon as one that was combined. I assume that you won't want to do this as you'll end up with less weapons.
So if you added a check for if the result_weapon was the same type as one of the inputs, and didn't go ahead and recursively call find_possible_weapons(new_weapons), you'd trim the search down a little.
The other thing I could think of, is you are not keeping a track of work done, so if the return from find_possible_weapons(new_weapons) returns the same weapon that you already have got by combining other weapons, you might well be performing the same search branch multiple times.
e.g. if you have a, b, c, d, e, f, g, and if a + b = x, and c + d = x, then you algorithm will be performing two lots of comparing x against e, f, and g. So if you keep a track of what you've already computed, you'll be onto a winner...
Basically, you have to trim the search tree. There are loads of different techniques to do this: it's called search. If you want more advice, I'd recommend going to the computer science stack exchange.
If you are still struggling, then you could always start weighting items/resulting items, and only focus on doing the calculation on 'high gain' objects...
You might want to start by creating a Weapon[][] matrix, to show the results of forging each pair. You could map the name of the weapon to the index of the matrix axis, and lookup of the results of a weapon combination would occur in constant time.
My task:
Create a program to copy a picture (given as input) using primitives only (like triangle or something). The program should use evolutionary algorithm to create output picture.
My question:
I need to invent an algorithm to create populations and check them (how much - in % - they match the input picture).
I have an idea; you can find it below.
So what I want from you: advice (if you find my idea not so bad) or inspiration (maybe you have a better idea?)
My idea:
Let's say that I'll use only triangles to build the output picture.
My first population is P pictures (generated by using T randomly generated triangles - called Elements).
I check by my fitness function every pictures in population and choose E of them as elite and rest of population just remove:
To compare 2 pictures we check every pixel in picture A and compare his R,G,B with
the same pixel (the same coordinates) in picture B.
I use this:
SingleDif = sqrt[ (Ar - Br)^2 + (Ag - Bg)^2 + (Ab - Bb)^2]
then i sum all differences (from all pixels) - lets call it SumDif
and use:
PictureDif = (DifMax - SumDif)/DifMax
where
DifMax = pictureHeight * pictureWidth * 255*3
The best are used to create the next population in this way:
picture MakeChild(picture Mother, picture Father)
{
picture child;
for( int i = 0; i < T; ++i )
{
j //this is a random number from 0 to 1 - created now
if( j < 0.5 ) child.element(i) = Mother.element(i);
else child.element(i) = Father.element(i)
if( j < some small % ) mutate( child.element(i) );
}
return child;
}
So it's quite simple. Only the mutation needs a comment: So there is always some small probability that element X in child will be different than X in his parent. To do this we make random changes in element in child (change his colour by random number, or add random number to his (x,y) coordinate - or his node).
So this is my idea... I didn't test it, didn't code it.
Please check my idea - what do you think about it?
I would make the number of patches of each child dynamic and get the mutation operation to insert/delete patches with some (low) probability. Of course this could result in a lot of redundancy and bloat in the child's genome. In these situations, it is usually a good idea to use the length of an individual's genome as a parameter of the fitness function so that individuals get rewarded (with a higher fitness value) for using fewer patches. So for example if the PictureDif of individuals A and B are the same but the A has fewer patches than B, then A has a higher fitness.
Another issue is the reproductive operator that you proposed (namely, the crossover operation). In order for the evolutionary process to work efficiently, you need to achieve a reasonable exploration and exploitation balance. One way of doing this is by having a set of reproductive operators that exhibit a good fitness correlation [1] which means the fitness of a child must be close to the fitness of its parent(s).
In the case of single parent reproduction you only need to find the right mutation parameters. However, when it comes to multi-parent reproduction (crossover) one of the frequently used techniques is to produce 2 children (instead of 1) from the same 2 parents. For the first child, each gene comes from the mother with the probability of 0.2 and from the father with the probability of 0.8, and for the second child the other way around. Of course after the crossover, you can do the mutation.
Oh and one more thing, for the mutation operators, when you say
... make random changes in element in child (change his colour by random number, or add random number to his (x,y) coordinate - or his node)
it's a good idea to use a Gaussian distribution to change the colour, coordinate etc.
[1] Evolutionary Computation: A unified approach by Kenneth A. De Jong, page 69
In short: How to hash a free polyomino?
This could be generalized into: How to efficiently hash an arbitrary collection of 2D integer coordinates, where a set contains unique pairs of non-negative integers, and a set is considered unique if and only if no translation, rotation, or flip can map it identically to another set?
For impatient readers, please note I'm fully aware of a brute force approach. I'm looking for a better way -- or a very convincing proof that no other way can exist.
I'm working on some different algorithms to generate random polyominos. I want to test their output to determine how random they are -- i.e. are certain instances of a given order generated more frequently than others. Visually, it is very easy to identify different orientations of a free polyomino, for example the following Wikipedia illustration shows all 8 orientations of the "F" pentomino (Source):
How would one put a number on this polyomino - that is, hash a free polyomino? I don't want to depend on a prepolulated list of "named" polyominos. Broadly agreed-upon names only exists for orders 4 and 5, anyway.
This is not necessarily equavalent to enumerating all free (or one-sided, or fixed) polyominos of a given order. I only want to count the number of times a given configuration appears. If a generating algorithm never produces a certain polyomino it will simply not be counted.
The basic logic of the counting is:
testcount = 10000 // Arbitrary
order = 6 // Create hexominos in this test
hashcounts = new hashtable
for i = 1 to testcount
poly = GenerateRandomPolyomino(order)
hash = PolyHash(poly)
if hashcounts.contains(hash) then
hashcounts[hash]++
else
hashcounts[hash] = 1
What I'm looking for is an efficient PolyHash algorithm. The input polyominos are simply defined as a set of coordinates. One orientation of the T tetronimo could be, for example:
[[1,0], [0,1], [1,1], [2,1]]:
|012
-+---
0| X
1|XXX
You can assume that that input polyomino will already be normalized to be aligned against the X and Y axes and have only positive coordinates. Formally, each set:
Will have at least 1 coordinate where the x value is 0
Will have at least 1 coordinate where the y value is 0
Will not have any coordinates where x < 0 or y < 0
I'm really looking for novel algorithms that avoid the increasing number of integer operations required by a general brute force approach, described below.
Brute force
A brute force solution suggested here and here consists of hashing each set as an unsigned integer using each coordinate as a binary flag, and taking the minimum hash of all possible rotations (and in my case flips), where each rotation / flip must also be translated to the origin. This results in a total of 23 set operations for each input set to get the "free" hash:
Rotate (6x)
Flip (1x)
Translate (7x)
Hash (8x)
Find minimum of computed hashes (1x)
Where the sequence of operations to obtain each hash is:
Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Flip, Translate, Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Rotate, Translate, Hash
Well, I came up with a completely different approach. (Also thanks to corsiKa for some helpful insights!) Rather than hashing / encoding the squares, encode the path around them. The path consists of a sequence of 'turns' (including no turn) to perform before drawing each unit segment. I think an algorithm for getting the path from the coordinates of the squares is outside the scope of this question.
This does something very important: it destroys all location and orientation information, which we don't need. It is also very easy to get the path of the flipped object: you do so by simply reversing the order of the elements. Storage is compact because each element requires only 2 bits.
It does introduce one additional constraint: the polyomino must not have fully enclosed holes. (Formally, it must be simply connected.) Most discussions of polyominos consider a hole to exist even if it is sealed only by two touching corners, as this prevents tiling with any other non-trivial polyomino. Tracing the edges is not hindered by touching corners (as in the single heptomino with a hole), but it cannot leap from one outer loop to an inner one as in the complete ring-shaped octomino:
It also produces one additional challenge: finding the minumum ordering of the encoded path loop. This is because any rotation of the path (in the sense of string rotation) is a valid encoding. To always get the same encoding we have to find the minimal (or maximal) rotation of the path instructions. Thankfully this problem has already been solved: see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicographically_minimal_string_rotation.
Example:
If we arbitrarily assign the following values to the move operations:
No turn: 1
Turn right: 2
Turn left: 3
Here is the F pentomino traced clockwise:
An arbitrary initial encoding for the F pentomino is (starting at the bottom right corner):
2,2,3,1,2,2,3,2,2,3,2,1
The resulting minimum rotation of the encoding is
1,2,2,3,1,2,2,3,2,2,3,2
With 12 elements, this loop can be packed into 24 bits if two bits are used per instruction or only 19 bits if instructions are encoded as powers of three. Even with the 2-bit element encoding can easily fit that in a single unsigned 32 bit integer 0x6B6BAE:
1- 2- 2- 3- 1- 2- 2- 3- 2- 2- 3- 2
= 01-10-10-11-01-10-10-11-10-10-11-10
= 00000000011010110110101110101110
= 0x006B6BAE
The base-3 encoding with the start of the loop in the most significant powers of 3 is 0x5795F:
1*3^11 + 2*3^10 + 2*3^9 + 3*3^8 + 1*3^7 + 2*3^6
+ 2*3^5 + 3*3^4 + 2*3^3 + 2*3^2 + 3*3^1 + 2*3^0
= 0x0005795F
The maximum number of vertexes in the path around a polyomino of order n is 2n + 2. For 2-bit encoding the number of bits is twice the number of moves, so the maximum bits needed is 4n + 4. For base-3 encoding it's:
Where the "gallows" is the ceiling function. Accordingly any polyomino up to order 9 can be encoded in a single 32 bit integer. Knowing this you can choose your platform-specific data structure accordingly for the fastest hash comparison given the maximum order of the polyominos you'll be hashing.
You can reduce it down to 8 hash operations without the need to flip, rotate, or re-translate.
Note that this algorithm assumes you are operating with coordinates relative to itself. That is to say it's not in the wild.
Instead of applying operations that flip, rotate, and translate, instead simply change the order in which you hash.
For instance, let us take the F pent above. In the simple example, let us presume the hash operation was something like this:
int hashPolySingle(Poly p)
int hash = 0
for x = 0 to p.width
fory = 0 to p.height
hash = hash * 31 + p.contains(x,y) ? 1 : 0
hashPolySingle = hash
int hashPoly(Poly p)
int hash = hashPolySingle(p)
p.rotateClockwise() // assume it translates inside
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p)
// keep rotating for all 4 oritentations
p.flip()
// hash those 4
Instead of applying the function to all 8 different orientations of the poly, I would apply 8 different hash functions to 1 poly.
int hashPolySingle(Poly p, bool flip, int corner)
int hash = 0
int xstart, xstop, ystart, ystop
bool yfirst
switch(corner)
case 1: xstart = 0
xstop = p.width
ystart = 0
ystop = p.height
yfirst = false
break
case 2: xstart = p.width
xstop = 0
ystart = 0
ystop = p.height
yfirst = true
break
case 3: xstart = p.width
xstop = 0
ystart = p.height
ystop = 0
yfirst = false
break
case 4: xstart = 0
xstop = p.width
ystart = p.height
ystop = 0
yfirst = true
break
default: error()
if(flip) swap(xstart, xstop)
if(flip) swap(ystart, ystop)
if(yfirst)
for y = ystart to ystop
for x = xstart to xstop
hash = hash * 31 + p.contains(x,y) ? 1 : 0
else
for x = xstart to xstop
for y = ystart to ystop
hash = hash * 31 + p.contains(x,y) ? 1 : 0
hashPolySingle = hash
Which is then called in the 8 different ways. You could also encapsulate hashPolySingle in for loop around the corner, and around the flip or not. All the same.
int hashPoly(Poly p)
// approach from each of the 4 corners
int hash = hashPolySingle(p, false, 1)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, false, 2)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, false, 3)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, false, 4)
// flip it
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, true, 1)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, true, 2)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, true, 3)
hash = hash * 31 + hashPolySingle(p, true, 4)
hashPoly = hash
In this way, you're implicitly rotating the poly from each direction, but you're not actually performing the rotation and translation. It performs the 8 hashes, which seem to be entirely necessary in order to accurately hash all 8 orientations, but wastes no passes over the poly that are not actually doing hashes. This seems to me to be the most elegant solution.
Note that there may be a better hashPolySingle() algorithm to use. Mine uses a Cartesian exhaustion algorithm that is on the order of O(n^2). Its worst case scenario is an L shape, which would cause there to be an N/2 * (N-1)/2 sized square for only N elements, or an efficiency of 1:(N-1)/4, compared to an I shape which would be 1:1. It may also be that the inherent invariant imposed by the architecture would actually make it less efficient than the naive algorithm.
My suspicion is that the above concern can be alleviated by simulating the Cartesian exhaustion by converting the set of nodes into an bi-directional graph that can be traversed, causing the nodes to be hit in the same order as my much more naive hashing algorithm, ignoring the empty spaces. This will bring the algorithm down to O(n) as the graph should be able to be constructed in O(n) time. Because I haven't done this, I can't say for sure, which is why I say it's only a suspicion, but there should be a way to do it.
Here's my DFS (depth first search) explained:
Start with the top-most cell (left-most as a tiebreaker). Mark it as visited. Every time you visit a cell, check all four directions for unvisited neighbors. Always check the four directions in this order: up, left, down, right.
Example
In this example, up and left fail, but down succeeds. So far our output is 001, and we recursively search the "down" cell.
We mark our new current cell as visited (and we'll finish searching the original cell when we finish searching this cell). Here, up=0, left=1.
We search the left-most cell and there are no unvisted neighbors (up=0, left=0, down=0, right=0). Our total output so far is 001010000.
We continue our search of the second cell. down=0, right=1. We search the cell to the right.
up=0, left=0, down=1. Search the down cell: all 0s. Total output so far is 001010000010010000. Then, we return from the down cell...
right=0, return. return. (Now, we are at the starting cell.) right=0. Done!
So, the total output is 20 (N*4) bits: 00101000001001000000.
Encoding improvement
But, we can save some bits.
The last visited cell will always encode 0000 for its four directions. So, don't encode the last visited cell to save 4 bits.
Another improvement: if you reached a cell by moving left, don't check that cells right-side. So, we only need 3 bits per cell, except 4 bits for the first cell, and 0 for the last cell.
The first cell will never have an up, or left neighbor, so omit these bits. So the first cell takes 2 bits.
So, with these improvements, we use only N*3-4 bits (e.g. 5 cells -> 11 bits; 9 cells -> 23 bits).
If you really want, you can compact a little more by noting that exactly N-1 bits will be "1".
Caveat
Yes, you'll need to encode all 8 rotations/flips of the polyomino and choose the least to get a canonical encoding.
I suspect this will still be faster than the outline approach. Also, holes in the polyomino shouldn't be a problem.
I worked on the same problem recently. I solved the problem fairly simply by
(1) generate a unique ID for a polyomino, such that each identical poly would have the same UID. For example, find the bounding box, normalize the corner of the bounding box, and collect the set of non-empty cells.
(2) generate all possible permutations by rotating (and flipping, if appropriate) a polyomino, and look for duplicates.
The advantage of this brute approach, other than it's simplicity, is that it still works if the
polys are distinguishable in some other way, for example if some of them are colored or numbered.
You can set up something like a trie to uniquely identify (and not just hash) your polyomino. Take your normalized polyomino and set up a binary search tree, where the root branches on whether (0,0) is has a set pixel, the next level branches on whether (0,1) has a set pixel, and so on. When you look up a polyomino, simply normalize it and then walk the tree. If you find it in the trie, then you're done. If not, assign that polyomino a unique id (just increment a counter), generate all 8 possible rotations and flips, then add those 8 to the trie.
On a trie miss, you'll have to generate all the rotations and reflections. But on a trie hit it should cost less (O(k^2) for k-polyominos).
To make lookups even more efficient, you could use a couple bits at a time and use a wider tree instead of a binary tree.
A valid hash function, if you're really afraid of hash collisions, is to make a hash function x + order * y for coordinates and then loop trough all the coordinates of a piece, adding (order ^ i) * hash(coord[i]) to the piece hash. That way, you can guarantee you won't get any hash collisions.
This is going to be a long post and just for fun, so if you don't have much time better go help folks with more important questions instead :)
There is a game called "Tower Bloxx" recently released on xbox. One part of the game is to place different colored towers on a field in a most optimal way in order to maximize number of most valuable towers. I wrote an algorithm that would determine the most efficient tower placement but it is not very efficient and pretty much just brute forcing all possible combinations. For 4x4 field with 4 tower types it solves it in about 1 hr, 5 tower types would take about 40 hours which is too much.
Here are the rules:
There are 5 types of towers that could be placed on a field. There are several types of fields, the easiest one is just 4x4 matrix, others fields have some "blanks" where you can't build. Your aim is to put as many the most valuable towers on a field as possible to maximize total tower value on a field (lets assume that all towers are built at once, there is no turns).
Tower types (in order from less to most valuable):
Blue - can be placed anywhere, value = 10
Red - can be placed only besides blue, value = 20
Green - placed besides red and blue, value = 30
Yellow - besides green, red and blue, value = 40
White - besides yellow, green, red and blue, value = 100
Which means that for example green tower should have at least 1 red and 1 blue towers at either north, south, west or east neighbor cells (diagonals don't count). White tower should be surrounded with all other colors.
Here is my algorithm for 4 towers on 4x4 field:
Total number of combinations = 4^16
Loop through [1..4^16] and convert every number to base4 string in order to encode tower placement, so 4^16 = "3333 3333 3333 3333" which would represent our tower types (0=blue,...,3=yellow)
Convert tower placement string into matrix.
For every tower in a matrix check its neighbors and if any of requirements fails this whole combination fails.
Put all correct combinations into an array and then sort this array as strings in lexicographic order to find best possible combination (first need to sort characters in a string).
The only optimization I came up with is to skip combinations that don't contain any most valuable towers. It skips some processing but I still loop through all 4^16 combinations.
Any thought how this can be improved? Code samples would be helpful if in java or php.
-------Update--------
After adding more illegal states (yellow cannot be built in the corners, white cannot be built in corners and on the edges, field should contain at least one tower of each type), realizing that only 1 white tower could be possibly built on 4x4 field and optimizing java code the total time was brought down from 40 to ~16 hours. Maybe threading would bring it down to 10 hrs but that's probably brute forcing limit.
I found this question intriguing, and since I'm teaching myself Haskell, I decided to try my hand at implementing a solution in that language.
I thought about branch-and-bound, but couldn't come up with a good way to bound the solutions, so I just did some pruning by discarding boards that violate the rules.
My algorithm works by starting with an "empty" board. It places each possible color of tower in the first empty slot and in each case (each color) then recursively calls itself. The recursed calls try each color in the second slot, recursing again, until the board is full.
As each tower is placed, I check the just-placed tower and all of it's neighbors to verify that they're obeying the rules, treating any empty neighbors as wild cards. So if a white tower has four empty neighbors, I consider it valid. If a placement is invalid, I do not recurse on that placement, effectively pruning the entire tree of possibilities under it.
The way the code is written, I generate a list of all possible solutions, then look through the list to find the best one. In actuality, thanks to Haskell's lazy evaluation, the list elements are generated as the search function needs them, and since they're never referred to again they become available for garbage collection right away, so even for a 5x5 board memory usage is fairly small (2 MB).
Performance is pretty good. On my 2.1 GHz laptop, the compiled version of the program solves the 4x4 case in ~50 seconds, using one core. I'm running a 5x5 example right now to see how long it will take. Since functional code is quite easy to parallelize, I'm also going to experiment with parallel processing. There's a parallelized Haskell compiler that will not only spread the work across multiple cores, but across multiple machines as well, and this is a very parallelizable problem.
Here's my code so far. I realize that you specified Java or PHP, and Haskell is quite different. If you want to play with it, you can modify the definition of the variable "bnd" just above the bottom to set the board size. Just set it to ((1,1),(x, y)), where x and y are the number of columns and rows, respectively.
import Array
import Data.List
-- Enumeration of Tower types. "Empty" isn't really a tower color,
-- but it allows boards to have empty cells
data Tower = Empty | Blue | Red | Green | Yellow | White
deriving(Eq, Ord, Enum, Show)
type Location = (Int, Int)
type Board = Array Location Tower
-- towerScore omputes the score of a single tower
towerScore :: Tower -> Int
towerScore White = 100
towerScore t = (fromEnum t) * 10
-- towerUpper computes the upper bound for a single tower
towerUpper :: Tower -> Int
towerUpper Empty = 100
towerUpper t = towerScore t
-- boardScore computes the score of a board
boardScore :: Board -> Int
boardScore b = sum [ towerScore (b!loc) | loc <- range (bounds b) ]
-- boardUpper computes the upper bound of the score of a board
boardUpper :: Board -> Int
boardUpper b = sum [ bestScore loc | loc <- range (bounds b) ]
where
bestScore l | tower == Empty =
towerScore (head [ t | t <- colors, canPlace b l t ])
| otherwise = towerScore tower
where
tower = b!l
colors = reverse (enumFromTo Empty White)
-- Compute the neighbor locations of the specified location
neighborLoc :: ((Int,Int),(Int,Int)) -> (Int,Int) -> [(Int,Int)]
neighborLoc bounds (col, row) = filter valid neighborLoc'
where
valid loc = inRange bounds loc
neighborLoc' = [(col-1,row),(col+1,row),(col,row-1),(col,row+1)]
-- Array to store all of the neighbors of each location, so we don't
-- have to recalculate them repeatedly.
neighborArr = array bnd [(loc, neighborLoc bnd loc) | loc <- range bnd]
-- Get the contents of neighboring cells
neighborTowers :: Board -> Location -> [Tower]
neighborTowers board loc = [ board!l | l <- (neighborArr!loc) ]
-- The tower placement rule. Yields a list of tower colors that must
-- be adjacent to a tower of the specified color.
requiredTowers :: Tower -> [Tower]
requiredTowers Empty = []
requiredTowers Blue = []
requiredTowers Red = [Blue]
requiredTowers Green = [Red, Blue]
requiredTowers Yellow = [Green, Red, Blue]
requiredTowers White = [Yellow, Green, Red, Blue]
-- cellValid determines if a cell satisfies the rule.
cellValid :: Board -> Location -> Bool
cellValid board loc = null required ||
null needed ||
(length needed <= length empties)
where
neighbors = neighborTowers board loc
required = requiredTowers (board!loc)
needed = required \\ neighbors
empties = filter (==Empty) neighbors
-- canPlace determines if 'tower' can be placed in 'cell' without
-- violating the rule.
canPlace :: Board -> Location -> Tower -> Bool
canPlace board loc tower =
let b' = board // [(loc,tower)]
in cellValid b' loc && and [ cellValid b' l | l <- neighborArr!loc ]
-- Generate a board full of empty cells
cleanBoard :: Array Location Tower
cleanBoard = listArray bnd (replicate 80 Empty)
-- The heart of the algorithm, this function takes a partial board
-- (and a list of empty locations, just to avoid having to search for
-- them) and a score and returns the best board obtainable by filling
-- in the partial board
solutions :: Board -> [Location] -> Int -> Board
solutions b empties best | null empties = b
solutions b empties best =
fst (foldl' f (cleanBoard, best) [ b // [(l,t)] | t <- colors, canPlace b l t ])
where
f :: (Board, Int) -> Board -> (Board, Int)
f (b1, best) b2 | boardUpper b2 <= best = (b1, best)
| otherwise = if newScore > lstScore
then (new, max newScore best)
else (b1, best)
where
lstScore = boardScore b1
new = solutions b2 e' best
newScore = boardScore new
l = head empties
e' = tail empties
colors = reverse (enumFromTo Blue White)
-- showBoard converts a board to a printable string representation
showBoard :: Board -> String
showBoard board = unlines [ printRow row | row <- [minrow..maxrow] ]
where
((mincol, minrow), (maxcol, maxrow)) = bounds board
printRow row = unwords [ printCell col row | col <- [mincol..maxcol] ]
printCell col row = take 1 (show (board!(col,row)))
-- Set 'bnd' to the size of the desired board.
bnd = ((1,1),(4,4))
-- Main function generates the solutions, finds the best and prints
-- it out, along with its score
main = do putStrLn (showBoard best); putStrLn (show (boardScore best))
where
s = solutions cleanBoard (range (bounds cleanBoard)) 0
best = s
Also, please remember this is my first non-trivial Haskell program. I'm sure it can be done much more elegantly and succinctly.
Update: Since it was still very time-consuming to do a 5x5 with 5 colors (I waited 12 hours and it hadn't finished), I took another look at how to use bounding to prune more of the search tree.
My first approach was to estimate the upper bound of a partially-filled board by assuming every empty cell is filled with a white tower. I then modified the 'solution' function to track the best score seen and to ignore any board whose upper bound is less than than that best score.
That helped some, reducing a 4x4x5 board from 23s to 15s. To improve it further, I modified the upper bound function to assume that each Empty is filled with the best tower possible, consistent with the existing non-empty cell contents. That helped a great deal, reducing the 4x4x5 time to 2s.
Running it on 5x5x5 took 2600s, giving the following board:
G B G R B
R B W Y G
Y G R B R
B W Y G Y
G R B R B
with a score of 730.
I may make another modification and have it find all of the maximal-scoring boards, rather than just one.
If you don't want to do A*, use a branch and bound approach. The problem should be relatively easy to code up because your value functions are well defined. I imagine you should be able to prune off huge sections of the search space with relative ease. However because your search space is pretty large it may still take some time. Only one way to find out :)
The wiki article isn't the best in the world. Google can find you a ton of nice examples and trees and stuff to further illustrate the approach.
One easy way to improve the brute force method is to explore only legal states. For example, if you are trying all possible states, you will be testing many states where the top right corner is a white tower. All of these states will be illegal. It doesn't make sense to generate and test all of those states. So you want to generate your states one block at a time, and only go deeper into the tree when you are actually at a potentially valid state. This will cut down your search tree by many orders of magnitude.
There may be further fancy things you can do, but this is an easy to understand (hopefully) improvement to your current solution.
I think you will want to use a branch-and-bound algorithm because I think coming up with a good heuristic for an A* implementation will be hard (but, that's just my intuitition).
The pseudo-code for a branch-and-bound implementation is:
board = initial board with nothing on it, probably a 2D array
bestBoard = {}
function findBest(board)
if no more pieces can be added to board then
if score(board) > score(bestBoard) then
bestBoard = board
return
else
for each piece P we can legally add to board
newBoard = board with piece P added
//loose upper bound, could be improved
if score(newBoard) + 100*number of blanks in newBoard > score(bestBoard)
findBestHelper(newBoard)
The idea is that we search all possible boards, in order, but we keep track of the best one we have found so far (this is the bound). Then, if we find a partial board which we know will never be better than the best one so far then we stop looking working on that partial board: we trim that branch of the search tree.
In the code above I am doing the check by assuming that all the blanks would be filled by the white pieces, as we can't do better than that. I am sure that with a little bit of thought you can come up with a tighter bound than that.
Another place where you can try to optimize is in the order of the for-each loop. You want to try pieces in the order correct order. That is, optimally you want the first solution found to be the best one, or at least one with a really high score.
It seems like a good approach would be to start with a white tower and then build a set of towers around it based on the requirements, trying to find the smallest possible colored set of shapes which can act as interlocking tiles.
I wanted to advocate linear programming with integer unknowns, but it turns out that it's NP-hard even in the binary case. However, you can still get great success at optimizing a problem like yours, where there are many valid solutions and you simply want the best one.
Linear programming, for this kind of problem, essentially amounts to having a lot of variables (for example, the number of red towers present in cell (M, N)) and relationships among the variables (for example, the number of white towers in cell (M, N) must be less than or equal to the number of towers of the non-white color that has the smallest such number, among all its neighbors). It's kind of a pain to write up a linear program, but if you want a solution that runs in seconds, it's probably your best bet.
You've received a lot of good advice on the algorithmic side of things, so I don't have a lot to add. But, assuming Java as the language, here are a few fairly obvious suggestions for performance improvement.
Make sure you're not instantiating any objects inside that 4^16 loop. It's much, much cheaper for the JVM to re-initialize an existing object than to create a new one. Even cheaper to use arrays of primitives. :)
If you can help it, step away from the collection classes. They'll add a lot of overhead that you probably don't need.
Make sure you're not concatenating any strings. Use StringBuilder.
And lastly, consider re-writing the whole thing in C.