I was looking to have members submit their top-10 list of something, or their top 10 rankings, then have some algorithm combine the results. Is there something out there like that?
Thanks!
Ahhhh, that's open-ended alright. Let's consider a simple case where only two people vote:
1 ALPHA
2 BRAVO
3 CHARLIE
1 ALPHA
2 DELTA
3 BRAVO
We can't go purely by count... ALPHA should obviously win, though it has the same votes as BRAVO. Yet, we must avoid a case where just a few first place votes dominate a massive amount of 10th place votes. To do this, I suggest the following:
$score = log($num_of_answers - $rank + 2)
First place would then be worth just a bit over one point, and tenth place would get .3 points. That logarithmic scaling prevents ridiculous dominance, yet still gives weight to rankings. From those example votes (and assuming they were the top 3 of a list of 10), you would get:
ALPHA: 2.08
BRAVO: 1.95
DELTA: .1
CHARLIE: .95
Why? Well, that's subjective. I feel out of a very long list that 4,000 10th place votes is worth more than 1,000 1st place votes. You may scale it differently by changing the base of your log (natural, 2, etc.), or choose a different system.
You could just add up the total for each item of the ranking given by a user and then sort them.
ie:
A = (a,b,c)
B = (a,c,b)
C = (b,a,c)
D = (c,b,a)
E = (a,c,b)
F = (c,a,b)
a = 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 = 10
b = 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 14
c = 3 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 12
Thus,
a
c
b
I think you could solve this problem by using a max flow algorithm, to create an aggregate ranking, assuming the following:
Each unique item from the list of items is a node in a graph. E.g. if there are 10 things to vote on, there are 10 nodes.
An edge goes from node *a* to node *b* if *a* is immediately before *b* in a _single user submitted_ ranking.
The last node created from a _single user submitted_ ranking will have an edge pointed at the *sink*
The first node created from a _single user submitted_ ranking will have an incoming edge from the *source*
This should get you an aggregated top-10 list.
Related
Thor is playing a game where there are N levels and M types of available weapons. The levels are numbered from 0 to N-1 and the weapons are numbered from 0 to M-1. He can clear these levels in any order. In each level, some subset of these M weapons is required to clear this level. If in a particular level, he needs to buy x new weapons, he will pay x^2 coins for it. Also note that he can carry all the weapons he has currently to the next level. Initially, he has no weapons. Can you find out the minimum coins required such that he can clear all the levels?
Input Format
The first line of input contains 2 space separated integers:
N = the number of levels in the game
M = the number of types of weapons
N lines follow. The ith of these lines contains a binary string of length M. If the jth character of this string is 1, it means we need a weapon of type j to clear the ith level.
Constraints
1 <= N <= 20
1 <= M <= 20
Output Format
Print a single integer which is the answer to the problem.
Sample TestCase 1
Input
1 4
0101
Output
4
Explanation
There is only one level in this game. We need 2 types of weapons - 1 and 3. Since, initially, Thor has no weapons he will have to buy these, which will cost him 2^2 = 4 coins.
Sample TestCase 2
Input
3 3
111
001
010
Output
3
Explanation
There are 3 levels in this game. The 0th level (111) requires all 3 types of weapons. The 1st level (001) requires only weapon of type 2. The 2nd level requires only weapon of type 1. If we clear the levels in the given order (0-1-2), total cost = 3^2 + 0^2 + 0^2 = 9 coins. If we clear the levels in the order 1-2-0, it will cost = 1^2 + 1^2 + 1^2 = 3 coins, which is the optimal way.
The beauty of Gassa's answer is partly in the fact that if a different state can be reached by oring one of the levels' bitstring masks with the current state, we are guaranteed that achieving the current state did not include visiting this level (since otherwise those bits would already be set). This means checking a transition from one state to another by adding a different bitmask, guarantees we are looking at an ordering that did not yet include that mask. So a formulation like Gassa's could work: let f(st) represent the cost of acheiving state st, then:
f(st) = min(
some known cost of f(st),
f(prev_st) + (popcount(prev_st | level) - popcount(prev_st))^2
)
for all level and prev_st that or to st
I determine the rankings of i.e. 1000 participants in multiple categories.
The results are something like that:
Participant/Category/Place (lower is better):
A|1|1.
A|2|1.
A|3|1.
A|4|7.
B|1|2.
B|2|2.
B|3|2.
B|4|4.
[...]
Now I want to summarize the rankings. The standard method would be to sum up all places and divide it by the number of categories:
Participant A: (1+1+1+7) / 4 = 2,5
Participant B: (2+2+2+4) / 4 = 2,5
But I want to prefer participant A, because he's won 3 of 4 categories.
I could define fixed points for all places, i.e:
Place|Points
1|1000
2|500
3|250
4|125
5|62.5
6|31.25
7|15.625
[...]
Participant A: 1000+1000+1000+15.625 = 3015.625
Participant B: 500+500+500+125 = 1625
The problem is now, that I want to give every place some points, so it's still possible to sort low places. And when I continue to divide the available points by 2, the maximum number of decimal places are insufficient (Available points /2^Number of places).
What can I do?
How about using harmonic mean?
4 / (1/1 + 1/1 + 1/1 + 1/7) = 1.272727
4 / (1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/4) = 2.285714
We all know that the minimum number of moves required to solve the classical towers of hanoi problem is 2n-1. Now, let us assume that some of the discs have same size. What would be the minimum number of moves to solve the problem in that case.
Example, let us assume that there are three discs. In the classical problem, the minimum number of moves required would be 7. Now, let us assume that the size of disc 2 and disc 3 is same. In that case, the minimum number of moves required would be:
Move disc 1 from a to b.
Move disc 2 from a to c.
Move disc 3 from a to c.
Move disc 1 from b to c.
which is 4 moves. Now, given the total number of discs n and the sets of discs which have same size, find the minimum number of moves to solve the problem. This is a challenge by a friend, so pointers towards solution are welcome. Thanks.
Let's consider a tower of size n. The top disk has to be moved 2n-1 times, the second disk 2n-2 times, and so on, until the bottom disk has to be moved just once, for a total of 2n-1 moves. Moving each disk takes exactly one turn.
1 moved 8 times
111 moved 4 times
11111 moved 2 times
1111111 moved 1 time => 8 + 4 + 2 + 1 == 15
Now if x disks have the same size, those have to be in consecutive layers, and you would always move them towards the same target stack, so you could just as well collapse those to just one disk, requiring x turns to be moved. You could consider those multi-disks to be x times as 'heavy', or 'thick', if you like.
1
111 1 moved 8 times
111 collapse 222 moved 4 times, taking 2 turns each
11111 -----------> 11111 moved 2 times
1111111 3333333 moved 1 time, taking 3 turns
1111111 => 8 + 4*2 + 2 + 1*3 == 21
1111111
Now just sum those up and you have your answer.
Here's some Python code, using the above example: Assuming you already have a list of the 'collapsed' disks, with disks[i] being the weight of the collapsed disk in the ith layer, you can just do this:
disks = [1, 2, 1, 3] # weight of collapsed disks, top to bottom
print sum(d * 2**i for i, d in enumerate(reversed(disks)))
If instead you have a list of the sizes of the disks, like on the left side, you could use this algorithm:
disks = [1, 3, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7] # size of disks, top to bottom
last, t, s = disks[-1], 1, 0
for d in reversed(disks):
if d < last: t, last = t*2, d
s = s + t
print s
Output, in both cases, is 21, the required number of turns.
It completely depends on the distribution of the discs that are the same size. If you have n=7 discs and they are all the same size then the answer is 7 (or n). And, of course the standard problem is answered by 2n-1.
As tobias_k suggested, you can group same size discs. So now look at the problem as moving groups of discs. To move a certain number of groups, you have to know the size of each group
examples
1
n=7 //disc sizes (1,2,3,3,4,5,5)
g=5 //group sizes (1,1,2,1,2)
//group index (1,2,3,4,5)
number of moves = sum( g-size * 2^( g-count - g-index ) )
in this case
moves = 1*2^4 + 1*2^3 + 2*2^2 + 1*2^1 + 2*2^0
= 16 + 8 + 8 + 2 + 2
= 36
2
n=7 //disc sizes (1,1,1,1,1,1,1)
g=1 //group sizes (7)
//group index (1)
number of moves = sum( g-size * 2^( g-count - g-index ) )
in this case
moves = 7*2^0
= 7
3
n=7 //disc sizes (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
g=7 //group sizes (1,1,1,1,1,1,1)
//group index (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
number of moves = sum( g-size * 2^( g-count - g-index ) )
in this case
moves = 1*2^6 + 1*2^5 + 1*2^4 + 1*2^3 + 1*2^2 + 1*2^1 + 1*2^0
= 64 + 32 + 16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1
= 127
Interesting note about the last example, and the standard hanoi problem: sum(2n-1) = 2n - 1
I wrote a Github gist in C for this problem. I am attaching a link to it, may be useful to somebody, I hope.
Modified tower of Hanoi problem with one or more disks of the same size
There are n types of disks. For each type, all disks are identical. In array arr, I am taking the number of disks of each type. A, B and C are pegs or towers.
Method swap(int, int), partition(int, int) and qSort(int, int) are part of my implementation of the quicksort algorithm.
Method toh(char, char, char, int, int) is the Tower of Hanoi solution.
How it is working: Imagine we compress all the disks of the same size into one disk. Now we have a problem which has a general solution to the Tower of Hanoi. Now each time a disk moves, we add the total movement which is equal to the total number of that type of disk.
given a sorted array of distinct integers, what is the minimum number of steps required to make the integers contiguous? Here the condition is that: in a step , only one element can be changed and can be either increased or decreased by 1 . For example, if we have 2,4,5,6 then '2' can be made '3' thus making the elements contiguous(3,4,5,6) .Hence the minimum steps here is 1 . Similarly for the array: 2,4,5,8:
Step 1: '2' can be made '3'
Step 2: '8' can be made '7'
Step 3: '7' can be made '6'
Thus the sequence now is 3,4,5,6 and the number of steps is 3.
I tried as follows but am not sure if its correct?
//n is the number of elements in array a
int count=a[n-1]-a[0]-1;
for(i=1;i<=n-2;i++)
{
count--;
}
printf("%d\n",count);
Thanks.
The intuitive guess is that the "center" of the optimal sequence will be the arithmetic average, but this is not the case. Let's find the correct solution with some vector math:
Part 1: Assuming the first number is to be left alone (we'll deal with this assumption later), calculate the differences, so 1 12 3 14 5 16-1 2 3 4 5 6 would yield 0 -10 0 -10 0 -10.
sidenote: Notice that a "contiguous" array by your implied definition would be an increasing arithmetic sequence with difference 1. (Note that there are other reasonable interpretations of your question: some people may consider 5 4 3 2 1 to be contiguous, or 5 3 1 to be contiguous, or 1 2 3 2 3 to be contiguous. You also did not specify if negative numbers should be treated any differently.)
theorem: The contiguous numbers must lie between the minimum and maximum number. [proof left to reader]
Part 2: Now returning to our example, assuming we took the 30 steps (sum(abs(0 -10 0 -10 0 -10))=30) required to turn 1 12 3 14 5 16 into 1 2 3 4 5 6. This is one correct answer. But 0 -10 0 -10 0 -10+c is also an answer which yields an arithmetic sequence of difference 1, for any constant c. In order to minimize the number of "steps", we must pick an appropriate c. In this case, each time we increase or decrease c, we increase the number of steps by N=6 (the length of the vector). So for example if we wanted to turn our original sequence 1 12 3 14 5 16 into 3 4 5 6 7 8 (c=2), then the differences would have been 2 -8 2 -8 2 -8, and sum(abs(2 -8 2 -8 2 -8))=30.
Now this is very clear if you could picture it visually, but it's sort of hard to type out in text. First we took our difference vector. Imagine you drew it like so:
4|
3| *
2| * |
1| | | *
0+--+--+--+--+--*
-1| |
-2| *
We are free to "shift" this vector up and down by adding or subtracting 1 from everything. (This is equivalent to finding c.) We wish to find the shift which minimizes the number of | you see (the area between the curve and the x-axis). This is NOT the average (that would be minimizing the standard deviation or RMS error, not the absolute error). To find the minimizing c, let's think of this as a function and consider its derivative. If the differences are all far away from the x-axis (we're trying to make 101 112 103 114 105 116), it makes sense to just not add this extra stuff, so we shift the function down towards the x-axis. Each time we decrease c, we improve the solution by 6. Now suppose that one of the *s passes the x axis. Each time we decrease c, we improve the solution by 5-1=4 (we save 5 steps of work, but have to do 1 extra step of work for the * below the x-axis). Eventually when HALF the *s are past the x-axis, we can NO LONGER IMPROVE THE SOLUTION (derivative: 3-3=0). (In fact soon we begin to make the solution worse, and can never make it better again. Not only have we found the minimum of this function, but we can see it is a global minimum.)
Thus the solution is as follows: Pretend the first number is in place. Calculate the vector of differences. Minimize the sum of the absolute value of this vector; do this by finding the median OF THE DIFFERENCES and subtracting that off from the differences to obtain an improved differences-vector. The sum of the absolute value of the "improved" vector is your answer. This is O(N) The solutions of equal optimality will (as per the above) always be "adjacent". A unique solution exists only if there are an odd number of numbers; otherwise if there are an even number of numbers, AND the median-of-differences is not an integer, the equally-optimal solutions will have difference-vectors with corrective factors of any number between the two medians.
So I guess this wouldn't be complete without a final example.
input: 2 3 4 10 14 14 15 100
difference vector: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9-2 3 4 10 14 14 15 100 = 0 0 0 -5 -8 -7 -7 -91
note that the medians of the difference-vector are not in the middle anymore, we need to perform an O(N) median-finding algorithm to extract them...
medians of difference-vector are -5 and -7
let us take -5 to be our correction factor (any number between the medians, such as -6 or -7, would also be a valid choice)
thus our new goal is 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9+5=7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, and the new differences are 5 5 5 0 -3 -2 -2 -86*
this means we will need to do 5+5+5+0+3+2+2+86=108 steps
*(we obtain this by repeating step 2 with our new target, or by adding 5 to each number of the previous difference... but since you only care about the sum, we'd just add 8*5 (vector length times correct factor) to the previously calculated sum)
Alternatively, we could have also taken -6 or -7 to be our correction factor. Let's say we took -7...
then the new goal would have been 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9+7=9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16, and the new differences would have been 7 7 7 2 1 0 0 -84
this would have meant we'd need to do 7+7+7+2+1+0+0+84=108 steps, the same as above
If you simulate this yourself, can see the number of steps becomes >108 as we take offsets further away from the range [-5,-7].
Pseudocode:
def minSteps(array A of size N):
A' = [0,1,...,N-1]
diffs = A'-A
medianOfDiffs = leftMedian(diffs)
return sum(abs(diffs-medianOfDiffs))
Python:
leftMedian = lambda x:sorted(x)[len(x)//2]
def minSteps(array):
target = range(len(array))
diffs = [t-a for t,a in zip(target,array)]
medianOfDiffs = leftMedian(diffs)
return sum(abs(d-medianOfDiffs) for d in diffs)
edit:
It turns out that for arrays of distinct integers, this is equivalent to a simpler solution: picking one of the (up to 2) medians, assuming it doesn't move, and moving other numbers accordingly. This simpler method often gives incorrect answers if you have any duplicates, but the OP didn't ask that, so that would be a simpler and more elegant solution. Additionally we can use the proof I've given in this solution to justify the "assume the median doesn't move" solution as follows: the corrective factor will always be in the center of the array (i.e. the median of the differences will be from the median of the numbers). Thus any restriction which also guarantees this can be used to create variations of this brainteaser.
Get one of the medians of all the numbers. As the numbers are already sorted, this shouldn't be a big deal. Assume that median does not move. Then compute the total cost of moving all the numbers accordingly. This should give the answer.
community edit:
def minSteps(a):
"""INPUT: list of sorted unique integers"""
oneMedian = a[floor(n/2)]
aTarget = [oneMedian + (i-floor(n/2)) for i in range(len(a))]
# aTargets looks roughly like [m-n/2?, ..., m-1, m, m+1, ..., m+n/2]
return sum(abs(aTarget[i]-a[i]) for i in range(len(a)))
This is probably not an ideal solution, but a first idea.
Given a sorted sequence [x1, x2, …, xn]:
Write a function that returns the differences of an element to the previous and to the next element, i.e. (xn – xn–1, xn+1 – xn).
If the difference to the previous element is > 1, you would have to increase all previous elements by xn – xn–1 – 1. That is, the number of necessary steps would increase by the number of previous elements × (xn – xn–1 – 1). Let's call this number a.
If the difference to the next element is >1, you would have to decrease all subsequent elements by xn+1 – xn – 1. That is, the number of necessary steps would increase by the number of subsequent elements × (xn+1 – xn – 1). Let's call this number b.
If a < b, then increase all previous elements until they are contiguous to the current element. If a > b, then decrease all subsequent elements until they are contiguous to the current element. If a = b, it doesn't matter which of these two actions is chosen.
Add up the number of steps taken in the previous step (by increasing the total number of necessary steps by either a or b), and repeat until all elements are contiguous.
First of all, imagine that we pick an arbitrary target of contiguous increasing values and then calculate the cost (number of steps required) for modifying the array the array to match.
Original: 3 5 7 8 10 16
Target: 4 5 6 7 8 9
Difference: +1 0 -1 -1 -2 -7 -> Cost = 12
Sign: + 0 - - - -
Because the input array is already ordered and distinct, it is strictly increasing. Because of this, it can be shown that the differences will always be non-increasing.
If we change the target by increasing it by 1, the cost will change. Each position in which the difference is currently positive or zero will incur an increase in cost by 1. Each position in which the difference is currently negative will yield a decrease in cost by 1:
Original: 3 5 7 8 10 16
New target: 5 6 7 8 9 10
New Difference: +2 +1 0 0 -1 -6 -> Cost = 10 (decrease by 2)
Conversely, if we decrease the target by 1, each position in which the difference is currently positive will yield a decrease in cost by 1, while each position in which the difference is zero or negative will incur an increase in cost by 1:
Original: 3 5 7 8 10 16
New target: 3 4 5 6 7 8
New Difference: 0 -1 -2 -2 -3 -8 -> Cost = 16 (increase by 4)
In order to find the optimal values for the target array, we must find a target such that any change (increment or decrement) will not decrease the cost. Note that an increment of the target can only decrease the cost when there are more positions with negative difference than there are with zero or positive difference. A decrement can only decrease the cost when there are more positions with a positive difference than with a zero or negative difference.
Here are some example distributions of difference signs. Remember that the differences array is non-increasing, so positives always have to be first and negatives last:
C C
+ + + - - - optimal
+ + 0 - - - optimal
0 0 0 - - - optimal
+ 0 - - - - can increment (negatives exceed positives & zeroes)
+ + + 0 0 0 optimal
+ + + + - - can decrement (positives exceed negatives & zeroes)
+ + 0 0 - - optimal
+ 0 0 0 0 0 optimal
C C
Observe that if one of the central elements (marked C) is zero, the target must be optimal. In such a circumstance, at best any increment or decrement will not change the cost, but it may increase it. This result is important, because it gives us a trivial solution. We pick a target such that a[n/2] remains unchanged. There may be other possible targets that yield the same cost, but there are definitely none that are better. Here's the original code modified to calculate this cost:
//n is the number of elements in array a
int targetValue;
int cost = 0;
int middle = n / 2;
int startValue = a[middle] - middle;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
targetValue = startValue + i;
cost += abs(targetValue - a[i]);
}
printf("%d\n",cost);
You can not do it by iterating once on the array, that's for sure.
You need first to check the difference between each two numbers, for example:
2,7,8,9 can be 2,3,4,5 with 18 steps or 6,7,8,9 with 4 steps.
Create a new array with the difference like so: for 2,7,8,9 it wiil be 4,1,1. Now you can decide whether to increase or decrease the first number.
Lets assume that the contiguous array looks something like this -
c c+1 c+2 c+3 .. and so on
Now lets take an example -
5 7 8 10
The contiguous array in this case will be -
c c+1 c+2 c+3
In order to get the minimum steps, the sum of the modulus of the difference of the integers(before and after) w.r.t the ith index should be the minimum. In which case,
(c-5)^2 + (c-6)^2 + (c-6)^2 + (c-7)^2 should be minimum
Let f(c) = (c-5)^2 + (c-6)^2 + (c-6)^2 + (c-7)^2
= 4c^2 - 48c + 146
Applying differential calculus to get the minima,
f'(c) = 8c - 48 = 0
=> c = 6
So our contiguous array is 6 7 8 9 and the minimum cost here is 2.
To sum it up, just generate f(c), get the first differential and find out c.
This should take O(n).
Brute force approach O(N*M)
If one draws a line through each point in the array a then y0 is a value where each line starts at index 0. Then the answer is the minimum among number of steps reqired to get from a to every line that starts at y0, in Python:
y0s = set((y - i) for i, y in enumerate(a))
nsteps = min(sum(abs(y-(y0+i)) for i, y in enumerate(a))
for y0 in xrange(min(y0s), max(y0s)+1)))
Input
2,4,5,6
2,4,5,8
Output
1
3
I'm trying to solve one of the Project Euler problems. As a consequence, I need an algorithm that will help me find all possible partitions of a set, in any order.
For instance, given the set 2 3 3 5:
2 | 3 3 5
2 | 3 | 3 5
2 | 3 3 | 5
2 | 3 | 3 | 5
2 5 | 3 3
and so on. Pretty much every possible combination of the members of the set. I've searched the net of course, but haven't found much that's directly useful to me, since I speak programmer-ese not advanced-math-ese.
Can anyone help me out with this? I can read pretty much any programming language, from BASIC to Haskell, so post in whatever language you wish.
Have you considered a search tree? Each node would represent a choice of where to put an element and the leaf nodes are answers. I won't give you code because that's part of the fun of Project Euler ;)
Take a look at:
The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 3: Generating All Combinations and Partitions
7.2.1.5. Generating all set partitions
In general I would look at the structure of the recursion used to compute the number of configurations, and build a similar recursion for enumerating them. Best is to compute a one-to-one mapping between integers and configurations. This works well for permutations, combinations, etc. and ensures that each configuration is enumerated only once.
Now even the recursion for the number of partitions of some identical items is rather complicated.
For partitions of multisets the counting amounts to solving the generalization of Project Euler problem 181 to arbitrary multisets.
Well, the problem has two aspects.
Firsty, the items can be arranged in any order. So for N items, there are N! permutations (assuming the items are treated as unique).
Secondly, you can envision the grouping as a bit flag between each item indicating a divide. There would be N-1 of these flags, so for a given permutation there would be 2^(N-1) possible groupings.
This means that for N items, there would be a total of N!*(2^(N-1)) groupings/permutations, which gets big very very fast.
In your example, the top four items are groupings of one permutation. The last item is a grouping of another permutation. Your items can be viewed as :
2 on 3 off 3 off 5
2 on 3 on 3 off 5
2 on 3 off 3 on 5
2 on 3 on 3 on 5
2 off 5 on 3 off 3
The permutations (the order of display) can be derived by looking at them like a tree, as mentioned by the other two. This would almost certainly involve recursion, such as here.
The grouping is independent of them in many ways. Once you have all the permutations, you can link them with the groupings if needed.
Here is the code you need for this part of your problem:
def memoize(f):
memo={}
def helper(x):
if x not in memo:
memo[x]=f(x)
return memo[x]
return helper
#memoize
def A000041(n):
if n == 0: return 1
S = 0
J = n-1
k = 2
while 0 <= J:
T = A000041(J)
S = S+T if k//2%2!=0 else S-T
J -= k if k%2!=0 else k//2
k += 1
return S
print A000041(100) #the 100's number in this series, as an example
I quickly whipped up some code to do this. However, I left out separating every possible combination of the given list, because I wasn't sure it was actually needed, but it should be easy to add, if necessary.
Anyway, the code runs quite well for small amounts, but, as CodeByMoonlight already mentioned, the amount of possibilities gets really high really fast, so the runtime increases accordingly.
Anyway, here's the python code:
import time
def separate(toseparate):
"Find every possible way to separate a given list."
#The list of every possibility
possibilities = []
n = len(toseparate)
#We can distribute n-1 separations in the given list, so iterate from 0 to n
for i in xrange(n):
#Create a copy of the list to avoid modifying the already existing list
copy = list(toseparate)
#A boolean list indicating where a separator is put. 'True' indicates a separator
#and 'False', of course, no separator.
#The list will contain i separators, the rest is filled with 'False'
separators = [True]*i + [False]*(n-i-1)
for j in xrange(len(separators)):
#We insert the separators into our given list. The separators have to
#be between two elements. The index between two elements is always
#2*[index of the left element]+1.
copy.insert(2*j+1, separators[j])
#The first possibility is, of course, the one we just created
possibilities.append(list(copy))
#The following is a modification of the QuickPerm algorithm, which finds
#all possible permutations of a given list. It was modified to only permutate
#the spaces between two elements, so it finds every possibility to insert n
#separators in the given list.
m = len(separators)
hi, lo = 1, 0
p = [0]*m
while hi < m:
if p[hi] < hi:
lo = (hi%2)*p[hi]
copy[2*lo+1], copy[2*hi+1] = copy[2*hi+1], copy[2*lo+1]
#Since the items are non-unique, some possibilities will show up more than once, so we
#avoid this by checking first.
if not copy in possibilities:
possibilities.append(list(copy))
p[hi] += 1
hi = 1
else:
p[hi] = 0
hi += 1
return possibilities
t1 = time.time()
separations = separate([2, 3, 3, 5])
print time.time()-t1
sepmap = {True:"|", False:""}
for a in separations:
for b in a:
if sepmap.has_key(b):
print sepmap[b],
else:
print b,
print "\n",
It's based on the QuickPerm algorithm, which you can read more about here: QuickPerm
Basically, my code generates a list containing n separations, inserts them into the given list and then finds all possible permutations of the separations in the list.
So, if we use your example we would get:
2 3 3 5
2 | 3 3 5
2 3 | 3 5
2 3 3 | 5
2 | 3 | 3 5
2 3 | 3 | 5
2 | 3 3 | 5
2 | 3 | 3 | 5
In 0.000154972076416 seconds.
However, I read through the problem description of the problem you are doing and I see how you are trying to solve this, but seeing how quickly the runtime increases I don't think that it would work as fast you would expect. Remember that Project Euler's problems should solve in around a minute.