Maximize the sum of product of adjacent numbers - algorithm

Here is a question that I encountered during an Interviewstreet codesprint.
I was unable to find a a solution or even think in its direction. I'd be thankful if someone could help me find the soultion, or explain me how the problem neeeds to be dealt with.
Given numbers 1, 2, 3, .., N, arrange them in a order such that the
sum of product of adjecent numbers is maximized.
For example: if N = 3, and we order them as ( 1, 2, 3 ), the sum of
products is 1*2 + 2*3 = 8 and if we order them as ( 1, 3 ,2 ) the sum
of products is 1*3 + 3*2 = 9.
Input format :
First line of the input contains T, the number of test-cases. Then
follow T lines, each containing an integer N.
Output format :
For each test case print the maximum sum of product of adjacent
numbers.
Sample input :
2 2 4
Sample output :
2 23
Explanation :
In first test case given permutation is ( 1, 2 ). So maximum sum of
product is 1*2. In Second test case the numbers are (1,2,3,4).
Arrangement 1,3,4,2 has sum of product of adjacent numbers as
1*3+3*4+4*2 = 23. No other arrange has sum of product of adjacent
numbers more than 23.
Constraints :
1 <= T <= 10 1 <= N <= 200000

The maximum sum-of-adjacent-products comes when the largest value is in the middle of the sequence, and the successively lower values alternate to its left and right. That is, your sequence for a given value n would be [..., n-3, n-1, n, n-2, n-4, ...] (or the reverse of this, which will have the same sum of products).
So, leaving out the input-parsing bits, here's the heart of the algorithm (in Python, but easily translated to other languages):
def maximumSumOfAdjacentProducts(n):
if n == 1: # special case needed for a one element sequence
return 1
sumOfProducts = n * (n-1) # this pair is the "center" of the sequence
for i in range(n-2, 0, -1): # iterate downward from n-2 to 1
sumOfProducts += i*(i+2) # each adjacent pair is separated by 2
return sumOfProducts

Sort the array, call it sortedArray in ascending order.
Remove max1, max2 and put them in a result list.
Remove the next element and add it to the side of MAX(max1, max2).
Update max1 and max2. i.e. max1 is left side and max2 is right side of the list.
Repeat steps 3 & 4 until the sorted input array has elements.
Example:
inputArray: 1,3,4,2,5
sortedArray: 1,2,3,4,5
Add 5 and 4 to the list first.
result = [5, 4]
Remove 3 and add it to MAX(5,4)
result = [3, 5, 4]
Remove 2 and add it to MAX(3,4)
result = [3, 5, 4, 2]
Remove 1 and add it to MAX(3,2)
result = [1, 3, 5, 4, 2]

Related

Advanced Algorithms Problems ("Nice Triangle"): Prime number Pyramid where every number depends on numbers above it

I'm currently studying for an advanced algorithms and datastructures exam, and I simply can't seem to solve one of the practice-problems which is the following:
1.14) "Nice Triangle"
A "nice" triangle is defined in the following way:
There are three different numbers which the triangle consists of, namely the first three prime numbers (2, 3 and 5).
Every number depends on the two numbers below it in the following way.
Numbers are the same, resulting number is also the same. (2, 2 => 2)
Numbers are different, resulting number is the remaining number. (2, 3 => 5)
Given an integer N with length L, corresponding to the base of the triangle, determine the last element at the top
For example:
Given N = 25555 (and thus L = 5), the triangle looks like this:
2
3 5
2 5 5
3 5 5 5
2 5 5 5 5
=> 2 is the result of this example
What does the fact that every number is prime have to do with the problem?
By using a naive approach (simply calculating every single row), one obtains a time-complexity of O(L^2).
However, the professor said, it's possible with O(L), but I simply can't find any pattern!!!
I'm not sure why this problem would be used in an advanced algorithms course, but yes, you can do this in O(l) = O(log n) time.
There are a couple ways you can do it, but they both rely on recognizing that:
For the problem statement, it doesn't matter what digits you use. Lets use 0, 1, and 2 instead of 2, 3, and 5. Then
If a and b are the input numbers and c is the output, then c = -(a+b) mod 3
You can build the whole triangle using c = a+b mod 3 instead, and then just negate every second row.
Now the two ways you can do this in O(log n) time are:
For each digit d in the input, calculate the number of times (call it k) that it gets added into the final sum, add up all the kd mod 3, and then negate the result if you started with an even number of digits. That takes constant time per digit. Alternatively:
recognize that you can do arithmetic on n-sized values in constant time. Make a value that is a bit mask of all the digits in n. That takes 2 bits each. Then by using bitwise operations you can calculate each row from the previous one in constant time, for O(log n) time altogether.
Here's an implementation of the 2nd way in python:
def niceTriangle(n):
# a vector of 3-bit integers mod 3
rowvec = 0
# a vector of 1 for each number in the row
onevec = 0
# number of rows remaining
rows = 0
# mapping for digits 0-9
digitmap = [0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2]
# first convert n into the first row
while n > 0:
digit = digitmap[n % 10]
n = n//10
rows += 1
onevec = (onevec << 3) + 1
rowvec = (rowvec << 3) + digit
if rows%2 == 0:
# we have an even number of rows -- negate everything
rowvec = ((rowvec&onevec)<<1) | ((rowvec>>1)&onevec)
while rows > 1:
# add each number to its neighbor
rowvec += (rowvec >> 3)
# isolate the entries >= 3, by adding 1 to each number and
# getting the 2^2 bit
gt3 = ((rowvec + onevec) >> 2) & onevec
# subtract 3 from all the greater entries
rowvec -= gt3*3
rows -= 1
return [2,3,5][rowvec%4]

Convert the permutation sequence A to B by selecting a set in A then reversing that set and inserting that set at the beginning of A

Given the sequence A and B consisting of N numbers that are permutations of 1,2,3,...,N. At each step, you choose a set S in sequence A in order from left to right (the numbers selected will be removed from A), then reverse S and add all elements in S to the beginning of the sequence A. Find a way to transform A into B in log2(n) steps.
Input: N <= 10^4 (number of elements of sequence A, B) and 2 permutations sequence A, B.
Output: K (Number of steps to convert A to B). The next K lines are the set of numbers S selected at each step.
Example:
Input:
5 // N
5 4 3 2 1 // A sequence
2 5 1 3 4 // B sequence
Output:
2
4 3 1
5 2
Step 0: S = {}, A = {5, 4, 3, 2, 1}
Step 1: S = {4, 3, 1}, A = {5, 2}. Then reverse S => S = {1, 3, 4}. Insert S to beginning of A => A = {1, 3, 4, 5, 2}
Step 2: S = {5, 2}, A = {1, 3, 4}. Then reverse S => S = {2, 5}. Insert S to beginning of A => A = {2, 5, 1, 3, 4}
My solution is to use backtracking to consider all possible choices of S in log2(n) steps. However, N is too large so is there a better approach? Thank you.
For each operation of combined selecting/removing/prepending, you're effectively sorting the elements relative to a "pivot", and preserving order. With this in mind, you can repeatedly "sort" the items in backwards order (by that I mean, you sort on the most significant bit last), to achieve a true sort.
For an explicit example, lets take an example sequence 7 3 1 8. Rewrite the terms with their respective positions in the final sorted list (which would be 1 3 7 8), to get 2 1 0 3.
7 -> 2 // 7 is at index 2 in the sorted array
3 -> 1 // 3 is at index 0 in the sorted array
1 -> 0 // so on
8 -> 3
This new array is equivalent to the original- we are just using indices to refer to the values indirectly (if you squint hard enough, we're kinda rewriting the unsorted list as pointers to the sorted list, rather than values).
Now, lets write these new values in binary:
2 10
1 01
0 00
3 11
If we were to sort this list, we'd first sort by the MSB (most significant bit) and then tiebreak only where necessary on the subsequent bit(s) until we're at the LSB (least significant bit). Equivalently, we can sort by the LSB first, and then sort all values on the next most significant bit, and continuing in this fashion until we're at the MSB. This will work, and correctly sort the list, as long as the sort is stable, that is- it doesn't change the order of elements that are considered equal.
Let's work this out by example: if we sorted these by the LSB, we'd get
2 10
0 00
1 01
3 11
-and then following that up with a sort on the MSB (but no tie-breaking logic this time), we'd get:
0 00
1 01
2 10
3 11
-which is the correct, sorted result.
Remember the "pivot" sorting note at the beginning? This is where we use that insight. We're going to take this transformed list 2 1 0 3, and sort it bit by bit, from the LSB to the MSB, with no tie-breaking. And to do so, we're going to pivot on the criteria <= 0.
This is effectively what we just did in our last example, so in the name of space I won't write it out again, but have a look again at what we did in each step. We took the elements with the bits we were checking that were equal to 0, and moved them to the beginning. First, we moved 2 (10) and 0 (00) to the beginning, and then the next iteration we moved 0 (00) and 1 (01) to the beginning. This is exactly what operation your challenge permits you to do.
Additionally, because our numbers are reduced to their indices, the max value is len(array)-1, and the number of bits is log2() of that, so overall we'll only need to do log2(n) steps, just as your problem statement asks.
Now, what does this look like in actual code?
from itertools import product
from math import log2, ceil
nums = [5, 9, 1, 3, 2, 7]
size = ceil(log2(len(nums)-1))
bit_table = list(product([0, 1], repeat=size))
idx_table = {x: i for i, x in enumerate(sorted(nums))}
for bit_idx in range(size)[::-1]:
subset_vals = [x for x in nums if bit_table[idx_table[x]][bit_idx] == 0]
nums.sort(key=lambda x: bit_table[idx_table[x]][bit_idx])
print(" ".join(map(str, subset_vals)))
You can of course use bitwise operators to accomplish the bit magic ((thing << bit_idx) & 1) if you want, and you could del slices of the list + prepend instead of .sort()ing, this is just a proof-of-concept to show that it actually works. The actual output being:
1 3 7
1 7 9 2
1 2 3 5

Get permutation count

I searching for an algorithm which gives me the permutation count of the elements 1....n. If i define the cycle lengths.
For example n := 4
<Set of cycle lengths> -> permutation count
1,1,1,1 -> 1 read 4 cycles of length 1 leads to 1 permutation: 1,2,3,4
1,1,2 -> 5 read 2 cycles of length 1 and 1 cycle of length 2 leads to 5 permutations: 1,2,4,3, 1,4,3,2, 1,3,2,4, 2,1,3,4, 3,2,1,4,
2,2 -> 3 read 2 cycles of length 2 leads to 3 permutations: 2,1,4,3, 3,4,1,2,4,3,2,1
1,3 -> 9 read 1 cycle of length 1 and 1 cycle of length 3 leads to 9 permutations 1,3,2,4, 1,3,4,2, 1,4,2,3, 2,3,1,4, 2,4,3,1, 3,1,2,4, 3,2,4,1,4,1,3,2, 4,2,1,3,
4 -> 6 read 1 cycle of length 4 leads to 6 permutations:
2,3,4,1, 2,4,1,3, 3,1,4,2, 3,4,2,1, 4,1,2,3, 4,3,1,2
How can i compute the permutation count of a given set consisting cycle lengths? Iterating through all permutations is not an option.
For a given cycle type, we can produce a permutation with that cycle type by writing down a permutation of the list 1, ..., n and then bracketing it appropriately, according to the lengths in the cycle type, to get a permutation written in cycle notation.
For example, if we want cycle type (3, 2, 2), then the permutation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 is bracketed as (1 2 3)(4 5)(6 7), while 5, 1, 6, 2, 4, 3, 7 gives (5 1 6)(2 4)(3 7).
It's clear that we get all permutations of cycle type (3, 2, 2) this way, but it's also clear that we can get each permutation in multiple different ways. There are two causes of overcounting: first, we can make a cyclic shift for any of the cycles: (5 1 6)(2 4)(3 7) is the same permutation as (1 6 5)(2 4)(3 7) or (6 5 1)(2 4)(3 7). Second, cycles of the same length can be permuted arbitrarily: (5 1 6)(2 4)(3 7) is the same permutation as (5 1 6)(3 7)(2 4). A bit of thought should convince you that these are the only possible causes of overcounting.
To account for both causes of overcounting, we divide the total number of permutations by (a) the product of the cycle lengths, and also (b) the factorial of the number of cycles for any given cycle length. In the (3, 2, 2) case: we divide by 3 × 2 × 2 for (a), and 2! for (b), because there are two cycles of length 2.
Since this is Stack Overflow, here's some Python code:
from collections import Counter
from math import factorial
def count_cycle_type(p):
"""Number of permutations with a given cycle type."""
count = factorial(sum(p))
for cycle_length, ncycles in Counter(p).items():
count //= cycle_length ** ncycles * factorial(ncycles)
return count
Example:
>>> count_cycle_type((2, 2))
3
>>> count_cycle_type((3, 2, 2))
210
To double check correctness, we can add the counts for all cycle types of a given length n, and check that we get n!. The cycle types are the partitions of n. We can compute those fairly simply by a recursive algorithm. Here's some code to do that. partitions is the function we want; bounded_partitions is a helper.
def bounded_partitions(n, k):
"""Generate partitions of n with largest element <= k."""
if k == 0:
if n == 0:
yield ()
else:
if n >= k:
for c in bounded_partitions(n - k, k):
yield (k,) + c
yield from bounded_partitions(n, k - 1)
def partitions(n):
"""Generate partitions of n."""
return bounded_partitions(n, n)
Example:
>>> for partition in partitions(5): print(partition)
...
(5,)
(4, 1)
(3, 2)
(3, 1, 1)
(2, 2, 1)
(2, 1, 1, 1)
(1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
And here's the double check: the sum of all the cycle type counts, for total lengths 5, 6, 7 and 20. We get the expected results of 5!, 6!, 7! and 20!.
>>> sum(count_cycle_type(p) for p in partitions(5))
120
>>> sum(count_cycle_type(p) for p in partitions(6))
720
>>> sum(count_cycle_type(p) for p in partitions(7))
5040
>>> sum(count_cycle_type(p) for p in partitions(20))
2432902008176640000
>>> factorial(20)
2432902008176640000
This can be broken down into:
The number of ways to partition elements in to buckets matching the required count of elements with each distinct cycle size;
Multiplied by, for each distinct cycle size, the number of unique ways to partition the elements evenly into the required number of cycles;
Multiplied by, for each cycle, the number of distinct cyclic orderings
1: For bucket sizes s1...sk, that works out to n!/(s1! * ... * sk!)
2: For a bucket containing m elements that must be partitioned into c cycles, there are m!/( (m/c)!c * c! ) ways
3: For a cycle containing m elements, there are (m-1)! distinct cyclic orderings if m > 1, and just 1 ordering otherwise

Kth element in transformed array

I came across this question in recent interview :
Given an array A of length N, we are supposed to answer Q queries. Query form is as follows :
Given x and k, we need to make another array B of same length such that B[i] = A[i] ^ x where ^ is XOR operator. Sort an array B in descending order and return B[k].
Input format :
First line contains interger N
Second line contains N integers denoting array A
Third line contains Q i.e. number of queries
Next Q lines contains space-separated integers x and k
Output format :
Print respective B[k] value each on new line for Q queries.
e.g.
for input :
5
1 2 3 4 5
2
2 3
0 1
output will be :
3
5
For first query,
A = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
For query x = 2 and k = 3, B = [1^2, 2^2, 3^2, 4^2, 5^2] = [3, 0, 1, 6, 7]. Sorting in descending order B = [7, 6, 3, 1, 0]. So, B[3] = 3.
For second query,
A and B will be same as x = 0. So, B[1] = 5
I have no idea how to solve such problems. Thanks in advance.
This is solvable in O(N + Q). For simplicity I assume you are dealing with positive or unsigned values only, but you can probably adjust this algorithm also for negative numbers.
First you build a binary tree. The left edge stands for a bit that is 0, the right edge for a bit that is 1. In each node you store how many numbers are in this bucket. This can be done in O(N), because the number of bits is constant.
Because this is a little bit hard to explain, I'm going to show how the tree looks like for 3-bit numbers [0, 1, 4, 5, 7] i.e. [000, 001, 100, 101, 111]
*
/ \
2 3 2 numbers have first bit 0 and 3 numbers first bit 1
/ \ / \
2 0 2 1 of the 2 numbers with first bit 0, have 2 numbers 2nd bit 0, ...
/ \ / \ / \
1 1 1 1 0 1 of the 2 numbers with 1st and 2nd bit 0, has 1 number 3rd bit 0, ...
To answer a single query you go down the tree by using the bits of x. At each node you have 4 possibilities, looking at bit b of x and building answer a, which is initially 0:
b = 0 and k < the value stored in the left child of the current node (the 0-bit branch): current node becomes left child, a = 2 * a (shifting left by 1)
b = 0 and k >= the value stored in the left child: current node becomes right child, k = k - value of left child, a = 2 * a + 1
b = 1 and k < the value stored in the right child (the 1-bit branch, because of the xor operation everything is flipped): current node becomes right child, a = 2 * a
b = 1 and k >= the value stored in the right child: current node becomes left child, k = k - value of right child, a = 2 * a + 1
This is O(1), again because the number of bits is constant. Therefore the overall complexity is O(N + Q).
Example: [0, 1, 4, 5, 7] i.e. [000, 001, 100, 101, 111], k = 3, x = 3 i.e. 011
First bit is 0 and k >= 2, therefore we go right, k = k - 2 = 3 - 2 = 1 and a = 2 * a + 1 = 2 * 0 + 1 = 1.
Second bit is 1 and k >= 1, therefore we go left (inverted because the bit is 1), k = k - 1 = 0, a = 2 * a + 1 = 3
Third bit is 1 and k < 1, so the solution is a = 2 * a + 0 = 6
Control: [000, 001, 100, 101, 111] xor 011 = [011, 010, 111, 110, 100] i.e. [3, 2, 7, 6, 4] and in order [2, 3, 4, 6, 7], so indeed the number at index 3 is 6 and the solution (always talking about 0-based indexing here).

Count the coins including permutations of the same sequence

I've found a code to find number of possibilities to make change using given coins: How to count possible combination for coin problem. But how to count it, if we think about different permutations of the same sequence? I mean that, e.g. amount is 12, and "4 4 2 2" and "4 2 4 2" should be counted as 2, not 1.
As you've mentioned inside your question you can count the possible combinations as stated in How to count possible combination for coin problem. But in order to include the permutations into your answer:
If you distinguish the permutation of the same numbers [1 7 7] and [1 7 7] e.g. just count each sequence([1 7 7] here) as n! (n = # of elements in the sequence) [instead of 1]
Otherwise : multiply each sequence by n!/(m!l!...) where m = number of equal elements of type 1, l is number of equal elements of type 2 and so on... . For example for sequence like [a b b c c c] you should count this 6!/(2!*3!) [instead of 1]
So use the algorithm inside that link, that I don't repeat again, but just instead of counting each combination as 1 use the formula that I said (depending on the case you desire).
(! is factorial.)

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