I was asked the following question in an interview. I don't have any idea about how to solve this. Any suggestions?
Given the start and an ending integer as user input,
generate all integers with the following property.
Example:
123 , 1+2 = 3 , valid number
121224 12+12 = 24 , valid number
1235 1+2 = 3 , 2+3 = 5 , valid number
125 1+2 <5 , invalid number
A couple of ways to accomplish this are:
Test every number in the input range to see if it qualifies.
Generate only those numbers that qualify. Use a nested loop for the two starting values, append the sum of the loop indexes to the loop indexes to come up with the qualifying number. Exit the inner loop when the appended number is past the upper limit.
The second method might be more computationally efficient, but the first method is simpler to write and maintain and is O(n).
I don't know what the interviewer is looking for, but I would suspect the ability to communicate is more important than the answer.
The naive way to solve this problem is by iterating the numbers in the set range, parsing the numbers into a digit sequence and then testing the sequence according to the rule. There is an optimization in that the problem essentially asks you to find fibonnaci numbers so you can use two variables or registers and add them sequentially.
It is unclear from your question whether the component numbers have to have the same number of digits. If not, then you will have to generate all the combinations of the component number arrangements.
Related
Return the count of all prime numbers in range [a,b] such that all the digits are from set {1,5,9} . 1<=a<=b<=10⁹.
My approach -
I was trying to generate all the numbers which are from set {1,5,9}. which comes out to be 3^9(19683) and after that I am checking for is it prime or not.
Can I do this in a better time complexity?
Never generate a large set and after check all elements of the set, ruling out most. That requires a lot of memory to store things you'll be discarding. Instead, find a single number with "valid" digits, check for primeness, and only then store it in a set. Accessing large arrays of memory is very time-intense on modern computers compared to doing math.
"I produced all the numbers": I hope you're doing this smartly! You never have to check a number with a last digit being 5 for primeness (there's only a single prime that ends in 5; that's 5 itself!), for example. Also, you hopefully don't just build all combinations of digits "manually". Say, you find a number 19551, then 19559 is also a candidate, you never have to manually "combine" digits to try out the last digit.
Of course, your prime-checking algorithm needs to be matching your kind of problem: You can remove the initial check for divisibility by 2 (you never produce even numbers), for example. You never need to check for divisibility by 5, because you never use 5 or 0 as last digit. Depending on your prime checking algorithm, you also would want to save the factor that "killed" the xxxx1 – that's one factor you don't have to check xxxx9 against. Do your 3-factor-checking based on the count of 1,5 and 9 in your number; you can directly infer cross-sum and hence 3-divisibility from that.
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.
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.
I need to find if any permutation of the number exists within a specified range, i just need to return Yes or No.
For eg : Number = 122, and Range = [200, 250]. The answer would be Yes, as 221 exists within the range.
PS:
For the problem that i have in hand, the number to be searched
will only have two different digits (It will only contain 1 and 2,
Eg : 1112221121).
This is not a homework question. It was asked in an interview.
The approach I suggested was to find all permutations of the given number and check. Or loop through the range and check if we find any permutation of the number.
Checking every permutation is too expensive and unnecessary.
First, you need to look at them as strings, not numbers,
Consider each digit position as a seperate variable.
Consider how the set of possible digits each variable can hold is restricted by the range. Each digit/variable pair will be either (a) always valid (b) always invalid; or (c) its validity is conditionally dependent on specific other variables.
Now model these dependencies and independencies as a graph. As case (c) is rare, it will be easy to search in time proportional to O(10N) = O(N)
Numbers have a great property which I think can help you here:
For a given number a of value KXXXX, where K is given, we can
deduce that K0000 <= a < K9999.
Using this property, we can try to build a permutation which is within the range:
Let's take your example:
Range = [200, 250]
Number = 122
First, we can define that the first number must be 2. We have two 2's so we are good so far.
The second number must be be between 0 and 5. We have two candidate, 1 and 2. Still not bad.
Let's check the first value 1:
Any number would be good here, and we still have an unused 2. We have found our permutation (212) and therefor the answer is Yes.
If we did find a contradiction with the value 1, we need to backtrack and try the value 2 and so on.
If none of the solutions are valid, return No.
This Algorithm can be implemented using backtracking and should be very efficient since you only have 2 values to test on each position.
The complexity of this algorithm is 2^l where l is the number of elements.
You could try to implement some kind of binary search:
If you have 6 ones and 4 twos in your number, then first you have the interval
[1111112222; 2222111111]
If your range does not overlap with this interval, you are finished. Now split this interval in the middle, you get
(1111112222 + 222211111) / 2
Now find the largest number consisting of 1's and 2's of the respective number that is smaller than the split point. (Probably this step could be improved by calculating the split directly in some efficient way based on the 1 and 2 or by interpreting 1 and 2 as 0 and 1 of a binary number. One could also consider taking the geometric mean of the two numbers, as the candidates might then be more evenly distributed between left and right.)
[Edit: I think I've got it: Suppose the bounds have the form pq and pr (i.e. p is a common prefix), then build from q and r a symmetric string s with the 1's at the beginning and the end of the string and the 2's in the middle and take ps as the split point (so from 1111112222 and 1122221111 you would build 111122222211, prefix is p=11).]
If this number is contained in the range, you are finished.
If not, look whether the range is above or below and repeat with [old lower bound;split] or [split;old upper bound].
Suppose the range given to you is: ABC and DEF (each character is a digit).
Algorithm permutationExists(range_start, range_end, range_index, nos1, nos2)
if (nos1>0 AND range_start[range_index] < 1 < range_end[range_index] and
permutationExists(range_start, range_end, range_index+1, nos1-1, nos2))
return true
elif (nos2>0 AND range_start[range_index] < 2 < range_end[range_index] and
permutationExists(range_start, range_end, range_index+1, nos1, nos2-1))
return true
else
return false
I am assuming every single number to be a series of digits. The given number is represented as {numberOf1s, numberOf2s}. I am trying to fit the digits (first 1s and then 2s) within the range, if not the procudure returns a false.
PS: I might be really wrong. I dont know if this sort of thing can work. I haven't given it much thought, really..
UPDATE
I am wrong in the way I express the algorithm. There are a few changes that need to be done in it. Here is a working code (It worked for most of my test cases): http://ideone.com/1aOa4
You really only need to check at most TWO of the possible permutations.
Suppose your input number contains only the digits X and Y, with X<Y. In your example, X=1 and Y=2. I'll ignore all the special cases where you've run out of one digit or the other.
Phase 1: Handle the common prefix.
Let A be the first digit in the lower bound of the range, and let B be the first digit in the upper bound of the range. If A<B, then we are done with Phase 1 and move on to Phase 2.
Otherwise, A=B. If X=A=B, then use X as the first digit of the permutation and repeat Phase 1 on the next digit. If Y=A=B, then use Y as the first digit of the permutation and repeat Phase 1 on the next digit.
If neither X nor Y is equal to A and B, then stop. The answer is No.
Phase 2: Done with the common prefix.
At this point, A<B. If A<X<B, then use X as the first digit of the permutation and fill in the remaining digits however you want. The answer is Yes. (And similarly if A<Y<B.)
Otherwise, check the following four cases. At most two of the cases will require real work.
If A=X, then try using X as the first digit of the permutation, followed by all the Y's, followed by the rest of the X's. In other words, make the rest of the permutation as large as possible. If this permutation is in range, then the answer is Yes. If this permutation is not in range, then no permutation starting with X can succeed.
If B=X, then try using X as the first digit of the permutation, followed by the rest of the X's, followed by all the Y's. In other words, make the rest of the permutation as small as possible. If this permutation is in range, then the answer is Yes. If this permutation is not in range, then no permutation starting with X can succeed.
Similar cases if A=Y or B=Y.
If none of these four cases succeed, then the answer is No. Notice that at most one of the X cases and at most one of the Y cases can match.
In this solution, I've assumed that the input number and the two numbers in the range all contain the same number of digits. With a little extra work, the approach can be extended to cases where the numbers of digits differ.
I was trying to write an algorithm for given problem:
we are given a set of numbers- {n1,n2,n3,n4,n5......}
and we have to check that can we derive a number(Say X) using addition and subtraction by given numbers. X will always be less than all elements of the given set.
Eg.
Set: {2,3,4,6,9}
given number: 1, Result: Yes
9-4-4 =1
Set: {3,4,6,9}
given number: 2, Result: Yes
6-4 = 2
Thanks in advance.
Effectively you are looking for the ideal generated by the numbers in your set. The intergers form a principal ideal domain, which means every ideal is generated by a single integer. All you have to do is find this single integer -- say g -- and check whether X can be devided by g. Finding g is also easy -- it's the greatest common divisor of all elements in your set, which can be found using the Euclidean algorithm.
You example sets can generate every integer by addition and substraction, since the can generate 1. For example for the set {3,4,6,9} you have 1=4-3, and any integer n can be written as n times the sum of 4-3.
Assuming, from your first example, that you can use a number multiple times.
The given number must be a multiple of the GCD of your set. That is the only condition. It doesn't matter how big it is.
If you only want an Yes/No answer then it is sufficient to find the GCD. If you also want an expression for the given number the problem can be replaced with finding an expression for the GCD.
GCD = X+Y+..+Z-T-U-...-V