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Among n persons,a "celebrity" is defined as someone
who is known by everyone but does not know anyone. The
problem is to identify the celebrity, if one exists, by asking the
question only of the form, "Excuse me, do you know the person
over there?" (The assumption is that all the answers are correct,
and even that celebrity will also answer.)
The goal is to minimize the number of questions.
Is there a solution of the order less than the obvious O(n^2) here?
Using the analysis of the celebrity problem here
Brute-force solution. The graph has at most n(n-1) edges, and we can compute it by asking a question for each potential edge. At this
point, we can check whether a vertex is a sink by computing its
indegree and its outdegree. This brute-force solution asks n(n-1)
questions. Next we show how to to do this with at most 3(n-1)
questions and linear place.
An elegant solution. Our algorithm consists of two phases: in the elimination phase, we eliminate all but one person from being the
celebrity; in the verification phase we check whether this one
remaining person is indeed a celebrity. The elimination phase
maintains a list of possible celebrities. Initially it contains all n
people. In each iteration, we delete one person from the list. We
exploit the following key observation: if person 1 knows person 2,
then person 1 is not a celebrity; if person 1 does not know person 2,
then person 2 is not a celebrity. Thus, by asking person 1 if he knows
person 2, we can eliminate either person 1 or person 2 from the list
of possible celebrities. We can use this idea repeatedly to eliminate
all people but one, say person p. We now verify by brute force
whether p is a celebrity: for every other person i , we ask person p
whether he knows person i , and we ask persons i whether they know
person p . If person p always answers no, and the other people always
answer yes, the we declare person p as the celebrity. Otherwise, we
conclude there is no celebrity in this group.
Divide all the people in pairs.
For every pair (A, B), ask A if he knows B.
if the answer is yes, A can not be the celebrity, discard him.
if the answer is no, B can not be the celebrity, discard him.
Now, only half the people remains.
Repeat from 1 until just one person remains.
Cost O(N).
Here is O(N) time algorithm
Push all the elements into stack.
Remove top two elements(say A and B), and keep A if B knows A and A does not know B.
Remove both A,B is both know each other or both does not know each other
This question can be solved using graphs (indegree and outdegree concept) in O(N^2) Time complexity.
We can also solve this question in O(N) time and O(1) space using a simple two-pointer concept.
We are going to compare two persons at a time one from beginning and other from the end and we will remove that person from consideration which cannot be a celebrity. For example, if there are two persons X and Y and X can identify person Y then surely X cannot be a celebrity as it knows a person inside this party. Another case would be when X does not know Y and in this case, Y cannot be a celebrity as there is at least one person who does not know him/her inside a party. Using this intuition two-pointer concept can be applied to find the celebrity inside this party.
I found a good explanatory video on Youtube by algods.
You can refer to this video for a better explanation.
Video Link:
https://youtu.be/aENYremq77I
Here is my solution.
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main(){
int n;
//number of celebrities
cin>>n;
int a[n][n];
for(int i = 0;i < n;i++){
for(int j = 0;j < n;j++){
cin>>a[i][j];
}
}
int count = 0;
for(int i = 0;i < n;i++){
int pos = 0;
for(int j = 0;j < n;j++){
if(a[i][j] == 0){
count = count + 1;
}
else{
count = 0;
break;
}
}
if(count == n){
pos = i;
cout<<pos;
break;
}
}
return 0;
}
This is how I did it :)
Question - A celebrity is defined someone whom everyone else knows of, but do not know anyone. Given N people (indexed 0...(N-1)), and a function knowsOf defined
as follows: knowsOf(int person0, int person1) = true if person 0 knows person 1, and false otherwise
Find out the celebrity in the N given people if there is any.
// return -1 if there is no celeb otherwise return person index/number.
public int celeb(int n) {
int probaleCeleb = 0;
for(int i =1 ; i < n; i++) {
if(knowsOf(probaleCeleb , i)) { // true /false
probaleCeleb = i;
}
}
for(int i =0 ; i < n; i++) {
if( i != probaleCeleb &&
(!knowsOf( i , probaleCeleb) || (knowsOf( probaleCeleb , i)) ) {
probaleCeleb = -1;
break;
}
}
return probaleCeleb;
}
}
public class Solution {
public int findCelebrity(int n) {
if (n <= 1) {
return -1;
}
int left = 0;
int right = n - 1;
// First find the right candidate known by everyone, but doesn't know anyone.
while (left < right) {
if (knows(left, right)) {
left++;
} else {
right--;
}
}
// Validate if the candidate knows none and everyone knows him.
int candidate = right;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if (i != candidate && (!knows(i, candidate) || knows(candidate, i))) {
return -1;
}
}
return candidate;
}
}
int findCelebrity(int n) {
int i=0;
for(int j=1;j<n;j++){
if(knows(i,j)){
i=j;
}
}
for(int j=0;j<n;j++){
if(j!=i && (knows(i,j)|| !knows(j,i))){
return -1;
}
}
return i;
}
Let's assume that we have a pair of numbers (a, b). We can get a new pair (a + b, b) or (a, a + b) from the given pair in a single step.
Let the initial pair of numbers be (1,1). Our task is to find number k, that is, the least number of steps needed to transform (1,1) into the pair where at least one number equals n.
I solved it by finding all the possible pairs and then return min steps in which the given number is formed, but it taking quite long time to compute.I guess this must be somehow related with finding gcd.can some one please help or provide me some link for the concept.
Here is the program that solved the issue but it is not cleat to me...
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
#define INF 1000000000
int n,r=INF;
int f(int a,int b){
if(b<=0)return INF;
if(a>1&&b==1)return a-1;
return f(b,a-a/b*b)+a/b;
}
int main(){
cin>>n;
for(int i=1;i<=n/2;i++){
r=min(r,f(n,i));
}
cout<<(n==1?0:r)<<endl;
}
My approach to such problems(one I got from projecteuler.net) is to calculate the first few terms of the sequence and then search in oeis for a sequence with the same terms. This can result in a solutions order of magnitude faster. In your case the sequence is probably: http://oeis.org/A178031 but unfortunately it has no easy to use formula.
:
As the constraint for n is relatively small you can do a dp on the minimum number of steps required to get to the pair (a,b) from (1,1). You take a two dimensional array that stores the answer for a given pair and then you do a recursion with memoization:
int mem[5001][5001];
int solve(int a, int b) {
if (a == 0) {
return mem[a][b] = b + 1;
}
if (mem[a][b] != -1) {
return mem[a][b];
}
if (a == 1 && b == 1) {
return mem[a][b] = 0;
}
int res;
if (a > b) {
swap(a,b);
}
if (mem[a][b%a] == -1) { // not yet calculated
res = solve(a, b%a);
} else { // already calculated
res = mem[a][b%a];
}
res += b/a;
return mem[a][b] = res;
}
int main() {
memset(mem, -1, sizeof(mem));
int n;
cin >> n;
int best = -1;
for (int i = 1; i <= n; ++i) {
int temp = solve(n, i);
if (best == -1 || temp < best) {
best = temp;
}
}
cout << best << endl;
}
In fact in this case there is not much difference between dp and BFS, but this is the general approach to such problems. Hope this helps.
EDIT: return a big enough value in the dp if a is zero
You can use the breadth first search algorithm to do this. At each step you generate all possible NEXT steps that you havent seen before. If the set of next steps contains the result you're done if not repeat. The number of times you repeat this is the minimum number of transformations.
First of all, the maximum number you can get after k-3 steps is kth fibinocci number. Let t be the magic ratio.
Now, for n start with (n, upper(n/t) ).
If x>y:
NumSteps(x,y) = NumSteps(x-y,y)+1
Else:
NumSteps(x,y) = NumSteps(x,y-x)+1
Iteratively calculate NumSteps(n, upper(n/t) )
PS: Using upper(n/t) might not always provide the optimal solution. You can do some local search around this value for the optimal results. To ensure optimality you can try ALL the values from 0 to n-1, in which worst case complexity is O(n^2). But, if the optimal value results from a value close to upper(n/t), the solution is O(nlogn)
I came across this problem during an interview forum.,
Given an int array which might contain duplicates, find the largest subset of it which form a sequence.
Eg. {1,6,10,4,7,9,5}
then ans is 4,5,6,7
Sorting is an obvious solution. Can this be done in O(n) time.
My take on the problem is that this cannot be done O(n) time & the reason is that if we could do this in O(n) time we could do sorting in O(n) time also ( without knowing the upper bound).
As a random array can contain all the elements in sequence but in random order.
Does this sound a plausible explanation ? your thoughts.
I believe it can be solved in O(n) if you assume you have enough memory to allocate an uninitialized array of a size equal to the largest value, and that allocation can be done in constant time. The trick is to use a lazy array, which gives you the ability to create a set of items in linear time with a membership test in constant time.
Phase 1: Go through each item and add it to the lazy array.
Phase 2: Go through each undeleted item, and delete all contiguous items.
In phase 2, you determine the range and remember it if it is the largest so far. Items can be deleted in constant time using a doubly-linked list.
Here is some incredibly kludgy code that demonstrates the idea:
int main(int argc,char **argv)
{
static const int n = 8;
int values[n] = {1,6,10,4,7,9,5,5};
int index[n];
int lists[n];
int prev[n];
int next_existing[n]; //
int prev_existing[n];
int index_size = 0;
int n_lists = 0;
// Find largest value
int max_value = 0;
for (int i=0; i!=n; ++i) {
int v=values[i];
if (v>max_value) max_value=v;
}
// Allocate a lazy array
int *lazy = (int *)malloc((max_value+1)*sizeof(int));
// Set items in the lazy array and build the lists of indices for
// items with a particular value.
for (int i=0; i!=n; ++i) {
next_existing[i] = i+1;
prev_existing[i] = i-1;
int v = values[i];
int l = lazy[v];
if (l>=0 && l<index_size && index[l]==v) {
// already there, add it to the list
prev[n_lists] = lists[l];
lists[l] = n_lists++;
}
else {
// not there -- create a new list
l = index_size;
lazy[v] = l;
index[l] = v;
++index_size;
prev[n_lists] = -1;
lists[l] = n_lists++;
}
}
// Go through each contiguous range of values and delete them, determining
// what the range is.
int max_count = 0;
int max_begin = -1;
int max_end = -1;
int i = 0;
while (i<n) {
// Start by searching backwards for a value that isn't in the lazy array
int dir = -1;
int v_mid = values[i];
int v = v_mid;
int begin = -1;
for (;;) {
int l = lazy[v];
if (l<0 || l>=index_size || index[l]!=v) {
// Value not in the lazy array
if (dir==1) {
// Hit the end
if (v-begin>max_count) {
max_count = v-begin;
max_begin = begin;
max_end = v;
}
break;
}
// Hit the beginning
begin = v+1;
dir = 1;
v = v_mid+1;
}
else {
// Remove all the items with value v
int k = lists[l];
while (k>=0) {
if (k!=i) {
next_existing[prev_existing[l]] = next_existing[l];
prev_existing[next_existing[l]] = prev_existing[l];
}
k = prev[k];
}
v += dir;
}
}
// Go to the next existing item
i = next_existing[i];
}
// Print the largest range
for (int i=max_begin; i!=max_end; ++i) {
if (i!=max_begin) fprintf(stderr,",");
fprintf(stderr,"%d",i);
}
fprintf(stderr,"\n");
free(lazy);
}
I would say there are ways to do it. The algorithm is the one you already describe, but just use a O(n) sorting algorithm. As such exist for certain inputs (Bucket Sort, Radix Sort) this works (this also goes hand in hand with your argumentation why it should not work).
Vaughn Cato suggested implementation is working like this (its working like a bucket sort with the lazy array working as buckets-on-demand).
As shown by M. Ben-Or in Lower bounds for algebraic computation trees, Proc. 15th ACM Sympos. Theory Comput., pp. 80-86. 1983 cited by J. Erickson in pdf Finding Longest Arithmetic Progressions, this problem cannot be solved in less than O(n log n) time (even if the input is already sorted into order) when using an algebraic decision tree model of computation.
Earlier, I posted the following example in a comment to illustrate that sorting the numbers does not provide an easy answer to the question: Suppose the array is given already sorted into ascending order. For example, let it be (20 30 35 40 47 60 70 80 85 95 100). The longest sequence found in any subsequence of the input is 20,40,60,80,100 rather than 30,35,40 or 60,70,80.
Regarding whether an O(n) algebraic decision tree solution to this problem would provide an O(n) algebraic decision tree sorting method: As others have pointed out, a solution to this subsequence problem for a given multiset does not provide a solution to a sorting problem for that multiset. As an example, consider set {2,4,6,x,y,z}. The subsequence solver will give you the result (2,4,6) whenever x,y,z are large numbers not in arithmetic sequence, and it will tell you nothing about the order of x,y,z.
What about this? populate a hash-table so each value stores the start of the range seen so far for that number, except for the head element that stores the end of the range. O(n) time, O(n) space. A tentative Python implementation (you could do it with one traversal keeping some state variables, but this way seems more clear):
def longest_subset(xs):
table = {}
for x in xs:
start = table.get(x-1, x)
end = table.get(x+1, x)
if x+1 in table:
table[end] = start
if x-1 in table:
table[start] = end
table[x] = (start if x-1 in table else end)
start, end = max(table.items(), key=lambda pair: pair[1]-pair[0])
return list(range(start, end+1))
print(longest_subset([1, 6, 10, 4, 7, 9, 5]))
# [4, 5, 6, 7]
here is a un-optimized O(n) implementation, maybe you will find it useful:
hash_tb={}
A=[1,6,10,4,7,9,5]
for i in range(0,len(A)):
if not hash_tb.has_key(A[i]):
hash_tb[A[i]]=A[i]
max_sq=[];cur_seq=[]
for i in range(0,max(A)):
if hash_tb.has_key(i):
cur_seq.append(i)
else:
if len(cur_seq)>len(max_sq):
max_sq=cur_seq
cur_seq=[]
print max_sq
I am interested in ways to improve or come up with algorithms that are able to solve the Travelling salesman problem for about n = 100 to 200 cities.
The wikipedia link I gave lists various optimizations, but it does so at a pretty high level, and I don't know how to go about actually implementing them in code.
There are industrial strength solvers out there, such as Concorde, but those are way too complex for what I want, and the classic solutions that flood the searches for TSP all present randomized algorithms or the classic backtracking or dynamic programming algorithms that only work for about 20 cities.
So, does anyone know how to implement a simple (by simple I mean that an implementation doesn't take more than 100-200 lines of code) TSP solver that works in reasonable time (a few seconds) for at least 100 cities? I am only interested in exact solutions.
You may assume that the input will be randomly generated, so I don't care for inputs that are aimed specifically at breaking a certain algorithm.
200 lines and no libraries is a tough constraint. The advanced solvers use branch and bound with the Held–Karp relaxation, and I'm not sure if even the most basic version of that would fit into 200 normal lines. Nevertheless, here's an outline.
Held Karp
One way to write TSP as an integer program is as follows (Dantzig, Fulkerson, Johnson). For all edges e, constant we denotes the length of edge e, and variable xe is 1 if edge e is on the tour and 0 otherwise. For all subsets S of vertices, ∂(S) denotes the edges connecting a vertex in S with a vertex not in S.
minimize sumedges e we xe
subject to
1. for all vertices v, sumedges e in ∂({v}) xe = 2
2. for all nonempty proper subsets S of vertices, sumedges e in ∂(S) xe ≥ 2
3. for all edges e in E, xe in {0, 1}
Condition 1 ensures that the set of edges is a collection of tours. Condition 2 ensures that there's only one. (Otherwise, let S be the set of vertices visited by one of the tours.) The Held–Karp relaxation is obtained by making this change.
3. for all edges e in E, xe in {0, 1}
3. for all edges e in E, 0 ≤ xe ≤ 1
Held–Karp is a linear program but it has an exponential number of constraints. One way to solve it is to introduce Lagrange multipliers and then do subgradient optimization. That boils down to a loop that computes a minimum spanning tree and then updates some vectors, but the details are sort of involved. Besides "Held–Karp" and "subgradient (descent|optimization)", "1-tree" is another useful search term.
(A slower alternative is to write an LP solver and introduce subtour constraints as they are violated by previous optima. This means writing an LP solver and a min-cut procedure, which is also more code, but it might extend better to more exotic TSP constraints.)
Branch and bound
By "partial solution", I mean an partial assignment of variables to 0 or 1, where an edge assigned 1 is definitely in the tour, and an edge assigned 0 is definitely out. Evaluating Held–Karp with these side constraints gives a lower bound on the optimum tour that respects the decisions already made (an extension).
Branch and bound maintains a set of partial solutions, at least one of which extends to an optimal solution. The pseudocode for one variant, depth-first search with best-first backtracking is as follows.
let h be an empty minheap of partial solutions, ordered by Held–Karp value
let bestsolsofar = null
let cursol be the partial solution with no variables assigned
loop
while cursol is not a complete solution and cursol's H–K value is at least as good as the value of bestsolsofar
choose a branching variable v
let sol0 be cursol union {v -> 0}
let sol1 be cursol union {v -> 1}
evaluate sol0 and sol1
let cursol be the better of the two; put the other in h
end while
if cursol is better than bestsolsofar then
let bestsolsofar = cursol
delete all heap nodes worse than cursol
end if
if h is empty then stop; we've found the optimal solution
pop the minimum element of h and store it in cursol
end loop
The idea of branch and bound is that there's a search tree of partial solutions. The point of solving Held–Karp is that the value of the LP is at most the length OPT of the optimal tour but also conjectured to be at least 3/4 OPT (in practice, usually closer to OPT).
The one detail in the pseudocode I've left out is how to choose the branching variable. The goal is usually to make the "hard" decisions first, so fixing a variable whose value is already near 0 or 1 is probably not wise. One option is to choose the closest to 0.5, but there are many, many others.
EDIT
Java implementation. 198 nonblank, noncomment lines. I forgot that 1-trees don't work with assigning variables to 1, so I branch by finding a vertex whose 1-tree has degree >2 and delete each edge in turn. This program accepts TSPLIB instances in EUC_2D format, e.g., eil51.tsp and eil76.tsp and eil101.tsp and lin105.tsp from http://www2.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/groups/comopt/software/TSPLIB95/tsp/.
// simple exact TSP solver based on branch-and-bound/Held--Karp
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.util.regex.*;
public class TSP {
// number of cities
private int n;
// city locations
private double[] x;
private double[] y;
// cost matrix
private double[][] cost;
// matrix of adjusted costs
private double[][] costWithPi;
Node bestNode = new Node();
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
// read the input in TSPLIB format
// assume TYPE: TSP, EDGE_WEIGHT_TYPE: EUC_2D
// no error checking
TSP tsp = new TSP();
tsp.readInput(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
tsp.solve();
}
public void readInput(Reader r) throws IOException {
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(r);
Pattern specification = Pattern.compile("\\s*([A-Z_]+)\\s*(:\\s*([0-9]+))?\\s*");
Pattern data = Pattern.compile("\\s*([0-9]+)\\s+([-+.0-9Ee]+)\\s+([-+.0-9Ee]+)\\s*");
String line;
while ((line = in.readLine()) != null) {
Matcher m = specification.matcher(line);
if (!m.matches()) continue;
String keyword = m.group(1);
if (keyword.equals("DIMENSION")) {
n = Integer.parseInt(m.group(3));
cost = new double[n][n];
} else if (keyword.equals("NODE_COORD_SECTION")) {
x = new double[n];
y = new double[n];
for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
line = in.readLine();
m = data.matcher(line);
m.matches();
int i = Integer.parseInt(m.group(1)) - 1;
x[i] = Double.parseDouble(m.group(2));
y[i] = Double.parseDouble(m.group(3));
}
// TSPLIB distances are rounded to the nearest integer to avoid the sum of square roots problem
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) {
double dx = x[i] - x[j];
double dy = y[i] - y[j];
cost[i][j] = Math.rint(Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy));
}
}
}
}
}
public void solve() {
bestNode.lowerBound = Double.MAX_VALUE;
Node currentNode = new Node();
currentNode.excluded = new boolean[n][n];
costWithPi = new double[n][n];
computeHeldKarp(currentNode);
PriorityQueue<Node> pq = new PriorityQueue<Node>(11, new NodeComparator());
do {
do {
boolean isTour = true;
int i = -1;
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) {
if (currentNode.degree[j] > 2 && (i < 0 || currentNode.degree[j] < currentNode.degree[i])) i = j;
}
if (i < 0) {
if (currentNode.lowerBound < bestNode.lowerBound) {
bestNode = currentNode;
System.err.printf("%.0f", bestNode.lowerBound);
}
break;
}
System.err.printf(".");
PriorityQueue<Node> children = new PriorityQueue<Node>(11, new NodeComparator());
children.add(exclude(currentNode, i, currentNode.parent[i]));
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) {
if (currentNode.parent[j] == i) children.add(exclude(currentNode, i, j));
}
currentNode = children.poll();
pq.addAll(children);
} while (currentNode.lowerBound < bestNode.lowerBound);
System.err.printf("%n");
currentNode = pq.poll();
} while (currentNode != null && currentNode.lowerBound < bestNode.lowerBound);
// output suitable for gnuplot
// set style data vector
System.out.printf("# %.0f%n", bestNode.lowerBound);
int j = 0;
do {
int i = bestNode.parent[j];
System.out.printf("%f\t%f\t%f\t%f%n", x[j], y[j], x[i] - x[j], y[i] - y[j]);
j = i;
} while (j != 0);
}
private Node exclude(Node node, int i, int j) {
Node child = new Node();
child.excluded = node.excluded.clone();
child.excluded[i] = node.excluded[i].clone();
child.excluded[j] = node.excluded[j].clone();
child.excluded[i][j] = true;
child.excluded[j][i] = true;
computeHeldKarp(child);
return child;
}
private void computeHeldKarp(Node node) {
node.pi = new double[n];
node.lowerBound = Double.MIN_VALUE;
node.degree = new int[n];
node.parent = new int[n];
double lambda = 0.1;
while (lambda > 1e-06) {
double previousLowerBound = node.lowerBound;
computeOneTree(node);
if (!(node.lowerBound < bestNode.lowerBound)) return;
if (!(node.lowerBound < previousLowerBound)) lambda *= 0.9;
int denom = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < n; i++) {
int d = node.degree[i] - 2;
denom += d * d;
}
if (denom == 0) return;
double t = lambda * node.lowerBound / denom;
for (int i = 1; i < n; i++) node.pi[i] += t * (node.degree[i] - 2);
}
}
private void computeOneTree(Node node) {
// compute adjusted costs
node.lowerBound = 0.0;
Arrays.fill(node.degree, 0);
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++) costWithPi[i][j] = node.excluded[i][j] ? Double.MAX_VALUE : cost[i][j] + node.pi[i] + node.pi[j];
}
int firstNeighbor;
int secondNeighbor;
// find the two cheapest edges from 0
if (costWithPi[0][2] < costWithPi[0][1]) {
firstNeighbor = 2;
secondNeighbor = 1;
} else {
firstNeighbor = 1;
secondNeighbor = 2;
}
for (int j = 3; j < n; j++) {
if (costWithPi[0][j] < costWithPi[0][secondNeighbor]) {
if (costWithPi[0][j] < costWithPi[0][firstNeighbor]) {
secondNeighbor = firstNeighbor;
firstNeighbor = j;
} else {
secondNeighbor = j;
}
}
}
addEdge(node, 0, firstNeighbor);
Arrays.fill(node.parent, firstNeighbor);
node.parent[firstNeighbor] = 0;
// compute the minimum spanning tree on nodes 1..n-1
double[] minCost = costWithPi[firstNeighbor].clone();
for (int k = 2; k < n; k++) {
int i;
for (i = 1; i < n; i++) {
if (node.degree[i] == 0) break;
}
for (int j = i + 1; j < n; j++) {
if (node.degree[j] == 0 && minCost[j] < minCost[i]) i = j;
}
addEdge(node, node.parent[i], i);
for (int j = 1; j < n; j++) {
if (node.degree[j] == 0 && costWithPi[i][j] < minCost[j]) {
minCost[j] = costWithPi[i][j];
node.parent[j] = i;
}
}
}
addEdge(node, 0, secondNeighbor);
node.parent[0] = secondNeighbor;
node.lowerBound = Math.rint(node.lowerBound);
}
private void addEdge(Node node, int i, int j) {
double q = node.lowerBound;
node.lowerBound += costWithPi[i][j];
node.degree[i]++;
node.degree[j]++;
}
}
class Node {
public boolean[][] excluded;
// Held--Karp solution
public double[] pi;
public double lowerBound;
public int[] degree;
public int[] parent;
}
class NodeComparator implements Comparator<Node> {
public int compare(Node a, Node b) {
return Double.compare(a.lowerBound, b.lowerBound);
}
}
If your graph satisfy the triangle inequality and you want a guarantee of 3/2 within the optimum I suggest the christofides algorithm. I've wrote an implementation in php at phpclasses.org.
As of 2013, It is possible to solve for 100 cities using only the exact formulation in Cplex. Add degree equations for each vertex, but include subtour-avoiding constraints only as they appear. Most of them are not necessary. Cplex has an example on this.
You should be able to solve for 100 cities. You will have to iterate every time a new subtour is found. I ran an example here and in a couple of minutes and 100 iterations later I got my results.
I took Held-Karp algorithm from concorde library and 25 cities are solved in 0.15 seconds. This performance is perfectly good for me! You can extract the code (writen in ANSI C) of held-karp from concorde library: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/downloads/downloads.htm. If the download has the extension gz, it should be tgz. You might need to rename it. Then you should make little ajustments to port in in VC++. First take the file heldkarp h and c (rename it cpp) and other about 5 files, make adjustments and it should work calling CCheldkarp_small(...) with edgelen: euclid_ceiling_edgelen.
TSP is an NP-hard problem. (As far as we know) there is no algorithm for NP-hard problems which runs in polynomial time, so you ask for something that doesn't exist.
It's either fast enough to finish in a reasonable time and then it's not exact, or exact but won't finish in your lifetime for 100 cities.
To give a dumb answer: me too. Everyone is interrested in such algorithm, but as others already stated: I does not (yet?) exist. Esp your combination of exact, 200 nodes, few seconds runtime and just 200 lines of code is impossible. You already know that is it NP hard and if you got the slightest impression of asymptotic behaviour you should know that there is no way of achieving this (except you prove that NP=P, and even that I would say thats not possible). Even the exact commercial solvers need for such instances far more than some seconds and as you can imagine they have far more than 200 lines of code (even when you just consider their kernels).
EDIT: The wiki algorithms are the "usual suspects" of the field: Linear Programming and branch-and-bound. Their solutions for the instances with thousands of nodes took Years to solve (they just did it with very very much CPUs parallel, so they can do it faster). Some even use for the branch-and-bound problem specific knowledge for the bounding, so they are no general approaches.
Branch and bound just enumerates all possible paths (e.g. with backtracking) and applies once it has a solution this for to stop a started recursion when it can prove that the result is not better than the already found solution (e.g. if you just visited 2 of your cities and the path is already longer than a found 200 city tour. You can discard all tours that start with that 2 city combination). Here you can invest very much problem specific knowledge in the function that tells you, that the path is not going to be better than the already found solution. The better it is, the less paths you have to look at, the faster is your algorithm.
Linear Programming is an optimization method so solve linear inequality problems. It works in polynomial time (simplex just practically, but that doesnt matter here), but the solution is real. When you have the additional constraint that the solution must be integer, it gets NP-complete. For small instances it is possible, e.g. one method to solve it, then look which variable of the solution violates the integer part and add addition inequalities to change it (this is called cutting-plane, the name cames from the fact that the inequalities define (higher-dimensional) plane, the solution space is a polytop and by adding additional inequalities you cut something with a plane from the polytop). The topic is very complex and even a general simple simplex is hard to understand when you dont want dive deep into the math. There are several good books about, one of the betters is from Chvatal, Linear Programming, but there are several more.
I have a theory, but I've never had the time to pursue it:
The TSP is a bounding problem (single shape where all points lie on the perimeter) where the optimal solution is that solution that has the shortest perimeter.
There are plenty of simple ways to get all the points that lie on a minimum bounding perimeter (imagine a large elastic band stretched around a bunch of nails in a large board.)
My theory is that if you start pushing in on the elastic band so that the length of band increases by the same amount between adjacent points on the perimeter, and each segment remains in the shape of an eliptical arc, the stretched elastic will cross points on the optimal path before crossing points on non-optimal paths. See this page on mathopenref.com on drawing ellipses--particularly steps 5 and 6. Points on the bounding perimeter can be viewed as focal points of the ellipse (F1, F2) in the images below.
What I don't know is if the "bubble stretching" process needs to be reset after each new point is added, or if the existing "bubbles" continue to grow and each new point on the perimeter causes only the localized "bubble" to turn into two line segments. I'll leave that for you to figure out.
I'm practicing for the upcoming ACM programming competition in a week and I've gotten stumped on this programming problem.
The problem is as follows:
You have a puzzle consisting of a square grid of size 4. Each grid square holds a single coin; each coin is showing either heads (H) and tails (T). One such puzzle is shown here:
H H H H
T T T T
H T H T
T T H T
Any coin that is current showing Tails (T) can be flipped to Heads (H). However, any time we flip a coin, we must also flip the adjacent coins direct above, below and to the left and right in the same row. Thus if we flip the second coin in the second row we must also flip 4 other coins, giving us this arrangment (coins that changed are shown in bold).
H T H H
H H H T
H H H T
T T H T
If a coin is at the edge of the puzzle, so there is no coin on one side or the other, then we flip fewer coins. We do not "wrap around" to the other side. For example, if we flipped the bottom right coin of the arragnement above we would get:
H T H H
H H H T
H H H H
T T T H
Note: Only coins showing (T) tails can be selected for flipping. However, anytime we flip such a coin, adjacent coins are also flipped, regardless of their state.
The goal of the puzzle is to have all coins show heads. While it is possible for some arragnements to not have solutions, all the problems given will have solutions. The answer we are looking for is, for any given 4x4 grid of coins what is the least number of flips in order to make the grid entirely heads.
For Example the grid:
H T H H
T T T H
H T H T
H H T T
The answer to this grid is: 2 flips.
What I have done so far:
I'm storing our grids as two-dimensional array of booleans. Heads = true, tails = false.
I have a flip(int row, int col) method that will flip the adjacent coins according the rules above and I have a isSolved() method that will determine if the puzzle is in a solved state (all heads). So we have our "mechanics" in place.
The part we are having problems with is how should we loop through, going an the least amount of times deep?
Your puzzle is a classic Breadth-First Search candidate. This is because you're looking for a solution with the fewest possible 'moves'.
If you knew the number of moves to the goal, then that would be ideal for a Depth-First Search.
Those Wikipedia articles contain plenty of information about the way the searches work, they even contain code samples in several languages.
Either search can be recursive, if you're sure you won't run out of stack space.
EDIT: I hadn't noticed that you can't use a coin as the primary move unless it's showing tails. That does indeed make order important. I'll leave this answer here, but look into writing another one as well.
No pseudo-code here, but think about this: can you ever imagine yourself flipping a coin twice? What would be the effect?
Alternative, write down some arbitrary board (literally, write it down). Set up some real world coins, and pick two arbitrary ones, X and Y. Do an "X flip", then a "Y flip" then another "X flip". Write down the result. Now reset the board to the starting version, and just do a "Y flip". Compare the results, and think about what's happened. Try it a few times, sometimes with X and Y close together, sometimes not. Become confident in your conclusion.
That line of thought should lead you to a way of determining a finite set of possible solutions. You can test all of them fairly easily.
Hope this hint wasn't too blatant - I'll keep an eye on this question to see if you need more help. It's a nice puzzle.
As for recursion: you could use recursion. Personally, I wouldn't in this case.
EDIT: Actually, on second thoughts I probably would use recursion. It could make life a lot simpler.
Okay, perhaps that wasn't obvious enough. Let's label the coins A-P, like this:
ABCD
EFGH
IJKL
MNOP
Flipping F will always involve the following coins changing state: BEFGJ.
Flipping J will always involve the following coins changing state: FIJKN.
What happens if you flip a coin twice? The two flips cancel each other out, no matter what other flips occur.
In other words, flipping F and then J is the same as flipping J and then F. Flipping F and then J and then F again is the same as just flipping J to start with.
So any solution isn't really a path of "flip A then F then J" - it's "flip <these coins>; don't flip <these coins>". (It's unfortunate that the word "flip" is used for both the primary coin to flip and the secondary coins which change state for a particular move, but never mind - hopefully it's clear what I mean.)
Each coin will either be used as a primary move or not, 0 or 1. There are 16 coins, so 2^16 possibilities. So 0 might represent "don't do anything"; 1 might represent "just A"; 2 might represent "just B"; 3 "A and B" etc.
Test each combination. If (somehow) there's more than one solution, count the number of bits in each solution to find the least number.
Implementation hint: the "current state" can be represented as a 16 bit number as well. Using a particular coin as a primary move will always XOR the current state with a fixed number (for that coin). This makes it really easy to work out the effect of any particular combination of moves.
Okay, here's the solution in C#. It shows how many moves were required for each solution it finds, but it doesn't keep track of which moves those were, or what the least number of moves is. That's a SMOP :)
The input is a list of which coins are showing tails to start with - so for the example in the question, you'd start the program with an argument of "BEFGJLOP". Code:
using System;
public class CoinFlip
{
// All ints could really be ushorts, but ints are easier
// to work with
static readonly int[] MoveTransitions = CalculateMoveTransitions();
static int[] CalculateMoveTransitions()
{
int[] ret = new int[16];
for (int i=0; i < 16; i++)
{
int row = i / 4;
int col = i % 4;
ret[i] = PositionToBit(row, col) +
PositionToBit(row-1, col) +
PositionToBit(row+1, col) +
PositionToBit(row, col-1) +
PositionToBit(row, col+1);
}
return ret;
}
static int PositionToBit(int row, int col)
{
if (row < 0 || row > 3 || col < 0 || col > 3)
{
// Makes edge detection easier
return 0;
}
return 1 << (row * 4 + col);
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int initial = 0;
foreach (char c in args[0])
{
initial += 1 << (c-'A');
}
Console.WriteLine("Initial = {0}", initial);
ChangeState(initial, 0, 0);
}
static void ChangeState(int current, int nextCoin, int currentFlips)
{
// Reached the end. Success?
if (nextCoin == 16)
{
if (current == 0)
{
// More work required if we want to display the solution :)
Console.WriteLine("Found solution with {0} flips", currentFlips);
}
}
else
{
// Don't flip this coin
ChangeState(current, nextCoin+1, currentFlips);
// Or do...
ChangeState(current ^ MoveTransitions[nextCoin], nextCoin+1, currentFlips+1);
}
}
}
I would suggest a breadth first search, as someone else already mentioned.
The big secret here is to have multiple copies of the game board. Don't think of "the board."
I suggest creating a data structure that contains a representation of a board, and an ordered list of moves that got to that board from the starting position. A move is the coordinates of the center coin in a set of flips. I'll call an instance of this data structure a "state" below.
My basic algorithm would look something like this:
Create a queue.
Create a state that contains the start position and an empty list of moves.
Put this state into the queue.
Loop forever:
Pull first state off of queue.
For each coin showing tails on the board:
Create a new state by flipping that coin and the appropriate others around it.
Add the coordinates of that coin to the list of moves in the new state.
If the new state shows all heads:
Rejoice, you are done.
Push the new state into the end of the queue.
If you like, you could add a limit to the length of the queue or the length of move lists, to pick a place to give up. You could also keep track of boards that you have already seen in order to detect loops. If the queue empties and you haven't found any solutions, then none exist.
Also, a few of the comments already made seem to ignore the fact that the problem only allows coins that show tails to be in the middle of a move. This means that order very much does matter. If the first move flips a coin from heads to tails, then that coin can be the center of the second move, but it could not have been the center of the first move. Similarly, if the first move flips a coin from tails to heads, then that coin cannot be the center of the second move, even though it could have been the center of the first move.
The grid, read in row-major order, is nothing more than a 16 bit integer. Both the grid given by the problem and the 16 possible moves (or "generators") can be stored as 16 bit integers, thus the problems amounts to find the least possible number of generators which, summed by means of bitwise XOR, gives the grid itself as the result. I wonder if there's a smarter alternative than trying all the 65536 possibilities.
EDIT: Indeed there is a convenient way to do bruteforcing. You can try all the 1-move patterns, then all the 2-moves patterns, and so on. When a n-moves pattern matches the grid, you can stop, exhibit the winning pattern and say that the solution requires at least n moves. Enumeration of all the n-moves patterns is a recursive problem.
EDIT2: You can bruteforce with something along the lines of the following (probably buggy) recursive pseudocode:
// Tries all the n bit patterns with k bits set to 1
tryAllPatterns(unsigned short n, unsigned short k, unsigned short commonAddend=0)
{
if(n == 0)
tryPattern(commonAddend);
else
{
// All the patterns that have the n-th bit set to 1 and k-1 bits
// set to 1 in the remaining
tryAllPatterns(n-1, k-1, (2^(n-1) xor commonAddend) );
// All the patterns that have the n-th bit set to 0 and k bits
// set to 1 in the remaining
tryAllPatterns(n-1, k, commonAddend );
}
}
To elaborate on Federico's suggestion, the problem is about finding a set of the 16 generators that xor'ed together gives the starting position.
But if we consider each generator as a vector of integers modulo 2, this becomes finding a linear combination of vectors, that equal the starting position.
Solving this should just be a matter of gaussian elimination (mod 2).
EDIT:
After thinking a bit more, I think this would work:
Build a binary matrix G of all the generators, and let s be the starting state. We are looking for vectors x satisfying Gx=s (mod 2). After doing gaussian elimination, we either end up with such a vector x or we find that there are no solutions.
The problem is then to find the vector y such that Gy = 0 and x^y has as few bits set as possible, and I think the easiest way to find this would be to try all such y. Since they only depend on G, they can be precomputed.
I admit that a brute-force search would be a lot easier to implement, though. =)
Okay, here's an answer now that I've read the rules properly :)
It's a breadth-first search using a queue of states and the moves taken to get there. It doesn't make any attempt to prevent cycles, but you have to specify a maximum number of iterations to try, so it can't go on forever.
This implementation creates a lot of strings - an immutable linked list of moves would be neater on this front, but I don't have time for that right now.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
public class CoinFlip
{
struct Position
{
readonly string moves;
readonly int state;
public Position(string moves, int state)
{
this.moves = moves;
this.state = state;
}
public string Moves { get { return moves; } }
public int State { get { return state; } }
public IEnumerable<Position> GetNextPositions()
{
for (int move = 0; move < 16; move++)
{
if ((state & (1 << move)) == 0)
{
continue; // Not allowed - it's already heads
}
int newState = state ^ MoveTransitions[move];
yield return new Position(moves + (char)(move+'A'), newState);
}
}
}
// All ints could really be ushorts, but ints are easier
// to work with
static readonly int[] MoveTransitions = CalculateMoveTransitions();
static int[] CalculateMoveTransitions()
{
int[] ret = new int[16];
for (int i=0; i < 16; i++)
{
int row = i / 4;
int col = i % 4;
ret[i] = PositionToBit(row, col) +
PositionToBit(row-1, col) +
PositionToBit(row+1, col) +
PositionToBit(row, col-1) +
PositionToBit(row, col+1);
}
return ret;
}
static int PositionToBit(int row, int col)
{
if (row < 0 || row > 3 || col < 0 || col > 3)
{
return 0;
}
return 1 << (row * 4 + col);
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int initial = 0;
foreach (char c in args[0])
{
initial += 1 << (c-'A');
}
int maxDepth = int.Parse(args[1]);
Queue<Position> queue = new Queue<Position>();
queue.Enqueue(new Position("", initial));
while (queue.Count != 0)
{
Position current = queue.Dequeue();
if (current.State == 0)
{
Console.WriteLine("Found solution in {0} moves: {1}",
current.Moves.Length, current.Moves);
return;
}
if (current.Moves.Length == maxDepth)
{
continue;
}
// Shame Queue<T> doesn't have EnqueueRange :(
foreach (Position nextPosition in current.GetNextPositions())
{
queue.Enqueue(nextPosition);
}
}
Console.WriteLine("No solutions");
}
}
If you are practicing for the ACM, I would consider this puzzle also for non-trivial boards, say 1000x1000. Brute force / greedy may still work, but be careful to avoid exponential blow-up.
The is the classic "Lights Out" problem. There is actually an easy O(2^N) brute force solution, where N is either the width or the height, whichever is smaller.
Let's assume the following works on the width, since you can transpose it.
One observation is that you don't need to press the same button twice - it just cancels out.
The key concept is just that you only need to determine if you want to press the button for each item on the first row. Every other button press is uniquely determined by one thing - whether the light above the considered button is on. If you're looking at cell (x,y), and cell (x,y-1) is on, there's only one way to turn it off, by pressing (x,y). Iterate through the rows from top to bottom and if there are no lights left on at the end, you have a solution there. You can then take the min of all the tries.
It's a finite state machine, where each "state" is the 16 bit integer corresponding the the value of each coin.
Each state has 16 outbound transitions, corresponding to the state after you flip each coin.
Once you've mapped out all the states and transitions, you have to find the shortest path in the graph from your beginning state to state 1111 1111 1111 1111,
I sat down and attempted my own solution to this problem (based on the help I received in this thread). I'm using a 2d array of booleans, so it isn't as nice as the people using 16bit integers with bit manipulation.
In any case, here is my solution in Java:
import java.util.*;
class Node
{
public boolean[][] Value;
public Node Parent;
public Node (boolean[][] value, Node parent)
{
this.Value = value;
this.Parent = parent;
}
}
public class CoinFlip
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
boolean[][] startState = {{true, false, true, true},
{false, false, false, true},
{true, false, true, false},
{true, true, false, false}};
List<boolean[][]> solutionPath = search(startState);
System.out.println("Solution Depth: " + solutionPath.size());
for(int i = 0; i < solutionPath.size(); i++)
{
System.out.println("Transition " + (i+1) + ":");
print2DArray(solutionPath.get(i));
}
}
public static List<boolean[][]> search(boolean[][] startState)
{
Queue<Node> Open = new LinkedList<Node>();
Queue<Node> Closed = new LinkedList<Node>();
Node StartNode = new Node(startState, null);
Open.add(StartNode);
while(!Open.isEmpty())
{
Node nextState = Open.remove();
System.out.println("Considering: ");
print2DArray(nextState.Value);
if (isComplete(nextState.Value))
{
System.out.println("Solution Found!");
return constructPath(nextState);
}
else
{
List<Node> children = generateChildren(nextState);
Closed.add(nextState);
for(Node child : children)
{
if (!Open.contains(child))
Open.add(child);
}
}
}
return new ArrayList<boolean[][]>();
}
public static List<boolean[][]> constructPath(Node node)
{
List<boolean[][]> solutionPath = new ArrayList<boolean[][]>();
while(node.Parent != null)
{
solutionPath.add(node.Value);
node = node.Parent;
}
Collections.reverse(solutionPath);
return solutionPath;
}
public static List<Node> generateChildren(Node parent)
{
System.out.println("Generating Children...");
List<Node> children = new ArrayList<Node>();
boolean[][] coinState = parent.Value;
for(int i = 0; i < coinState.length; i++)
{
for(int j = 0; j < coinState[i].length; j++)
{
if (!coinState[i][j])
{
boolean[][] child = arrayDeepCopy(coinState);
flip(child, i, j);
children.add(new Node(child, parent));
}
}
}
return children;
}
public static boolean[][] arrayDeepCopy(boolean[][] original)
{
boolean[][] r = new boolean[original.length][original[0].length];
for(int i=0; i < original.length; i++)
for (int j=0; j < original[0].length; j++)
r[i][j] = original[i][j];
return r;
}
public static void flip(boolean[][] grid, int i, int j)
{
//System.out.println("Flip("+i+","+j+")");
// if (i,j) is on the grid, and it is tails
if ((i >= 0 && i < grid.length) && (j >= 0 && j <= grid[i].length))
{
// flip (i,j)
grid[i][j] = !grid[i][j];
// flip 1 to the right
if (i+1 >= 0 && i+1 < grid.length) grid[i+1][j] = !grid[i+1][j];
// flip 1 down
if (j+1 >= 0 && j+1 < grid[i].length) grid[i][j+1] = !grid[i][j+1];
// flip 1 to the left
if (i-1 >= 0 && i-1 < grid.length) grid[i-1][j] = !grid[i-1][j];
// flip 1 up
if (j-1 >= 0 && j-1 < grid[i].length) grid[i][j-1] = !grid[i][j-1];
}
}
public static boolean isComplete(boolean[][] coins)
{
boolean complete = true;
for(int i = 0; i < coins.length; i++)
{
for(int j = 0; j < coins[i].length; j++)
{
if (coins[i][j] == false) complete = false;
}
}
return complete;
}
public static void print2DArray(boolean[][] array)
{
for (int row=0; row < array.length; row++)
{
for (int col=0; col < array[row].length; col++)
{
System.out.print((array[row][col] ? "H" : "T") + " ");
}
System.out.println();
}
}
}