The problem:
N points are given on a 2-dimensional plane. What is the maximum number of points on the same straight line?
The problem has O(N2) solution: go through each point and find the number of points which have the same dx / dy with relation to the current point. Store dx / dy relations in a hash map for efficiency.
Is there a better solution to this problem than O(N2)?
There is likely no solution to this problem that is significantly better than O(n^2) in a standard model of computation.
The problem of finding three collinear points reduces to the problem of finding the line that goes through the most points, and finding three collinear points is 3SUM-hard, meaning that solving it in less than O(n^2) time would be a major theoretical result.
See the previous question on finding three collinear points.
For your reference (using the known proof), suppose we want to answer a 3SUM problem such as finding x, y, z in list X such that x + y + z = 0. If we had a fast algorithm for the collinear point problem, we could use that algorithm to solve the 3SUM problem as follows.
For each x in X, create the point (x, x^3) (for now we assume the elements of X are distinct). Next, check whether there exists three collinear points from among the created points.
To see that this works, note that if x + y + z = 0 then the slope of the line from x to y is
(y^3 - x^3) / (y - x) = y^2 + yx + x^2
and the slope of the line from x to z is
(z^3 - x^3) / (z - x) = z^2 + zx + x^2 = (-(x + y))^2 - (x + y)x + x^2
= x^2 + 2xy + y^2 - x^2 - xy + x^2 = y^2 + yx + x^2
Conversely, if the slope from x to y equals the slope from x to z then
y^2 + yx + x^2 = z^2 + zx + x^2,
which implies that
(y - z) (x + y + z) = 0,
so either y = z or z = -x - y as suffices to prove that the reduction is valid.
If there are duplicates in X, you first check whether x + 2y = 0 for any x and duplicate element y (in linear time using hashing or O(n lg n) time using sorting), and then remove the duplicates before reducing to the collinear point-finding problem.
If you limit the problem to lines passing through the origin, you can convert the points to polar coordinates (angle, distance from origin) and sort them by angle. All points with the same angle lie on the same line. O(n logn)
I don't think there is a faster solution in the general case.
The Hough Transform can give you an approximate solution. It is approximate because the binning technique has a limited resolution in parameter space, so the maximum bin will give you some limited range of possible lines.
Again an O(n^2) solution with pseudo code. Idea is create a hash table with line itself as the key. Line is defined by slope between the two points, point where line cuts x-axis and point where line cuts y-axis.
Solution assumes languages like Java, C# where equals method and hashcode methods of the object are used for hashing function.
Create an Object (call SlopeObject) with 3 fields
Slope // Can be Infinity
Point of intercept with x-axis -- poix // Will be (Infinity, some y value) or (x value, 0)
Count
poix will be a point (x, y) pair. If line crosses x-axis the poix will (some number, 0). If line is parallel to x axis then poix = (Infinity, some number) where y value is where line crosses y axis.
Override equals method where 2 objects are equal if Slope and poix are equal.
Hashcode is overridden with a function which provides hashcode based on combination of values of Slope and poix. Some pseudo code below
Hashmap map;
foreach(point in the array a) {
foeach(every other point b) {
slope = calculateSlope(a, b);
poix = calculateXInterception(a, b);
SlopeObject so = new SlopeObject(slope, poix, 1); // Slope, poix and intial count 1.
SlopeObject inMapSlopeObj = map.get(so);
if(inMapSlopeObj == null) {
inMapSlopeObj.put(so);
} else {
inMapSlopeObj.setCount(inMapSlopeObj.getCount() + 1);
}
}
}
SlopeObject maxCounted = getObjectWithMaxCount(map);
print("line is through " + maxCounted.poix + " with slope " + maxCounted.slope);
Move to the dual plane using the point-line duality transform for p=(a,b) p*:y=a*x + b.
Now using a line sweep algorithm find all intersection points in NlogN time.
(If you have points which are one above the other just rotate the points to some small angle).
The intersection points corresponds in the dual plane to lines in the primer plane.
Whoever said that since 3SUM have a reduction to this problem and thus the complexity is O(n^2). Please note that the complexity of 3SUM is less than that.
Please check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3SUM and also read
https://tmc.web.engr.illinois.edu/reduce3sum_sosa.pdf
As already mentioned, there probably isn't a way to solve the general case of this problem better than O(n^2). However, if you assume a large number of points lie on the same line (say the probability that a random point in the set of points lie on the line with the maximum number of points is p) and don't need an exact algorithm, a randomized algorithm is more efficient.
maxPoints = 0
Repeat for k iterations:
1. Pick 2 random, distinct points uniformly at random
2. maxPoints = max(maxPoints, number of points that lies on the
line defined by the 2 points chosen in step 1)
Note that in the first step, if you picked 2 points which lies on the line with the maximum number of points, you'll get the optimal solution. Assuming n is very large (i.e. we can treat the probability of finding 2 desirable points as sampling with replacement), the probability of this happening is p^2. Therefore the probability of finding a suboptimal solution after k iterations is (1 - p^2)^k.
Suppose you can tolerate a false negative rate rate = err. Then this algorithm runs in O(nk) = O(n * log(err) / log(1 - p^2)). If both n and p are large enough, this is significantly more efficient than O(n^2). (i.e. Supposed n = 1,000,000 and you know there are at least 10,000 points that lie on the same line. Then n^2 would required on the magnitude of 10^12 operations, while randomized algorithm would require on the magnitude of 10^9 operations to get a error rate of less than 5*10^-5.)
It is unlikely for a $o(n^2)$ algorithm to exist, since the problem (of even checking if 3 points in R^2 are collinear) is 3Sum-hard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3SUM)
This is not a solution better than O(n^2), but you can do the following,
For each point convert first convert it as if it where in the (0,0) coordinate, and then do the equivalent translation for all the other points by moving them the same x,y distance you needed to move the original choosen point.
2.Translate this new set of translated points to the angle with respect to the new (0,0).
3.Keep stored the maximum number (MSN) of points that are in each angle.
4.Choose the maximum stored number (MSN), and that will be the solution
Related
I am working on a genetic algorithm. Here is how it works :
Input : a list of 2D points
Input : the degree of the curve
Output : the equation of the curve that passes through points the best way (try to minimize the sum of vertical distances from point's Ys to the curve)
The algorithm finds good equations for simple straight lines and for 2-degree equations.
But for 4 points and 3 degree equations and more, it gets more complicated. I cannot find the right combination of parameters : sometimes I have to wait 5 minutes and the curve found is still very bad. I tried modifying many parameters, from population size to number of parents selected...
Do famous combinations/theorems in GA programming can help me ?
Thank you ! :)
Based on what is given, you would need a polynomial interpolation in which, the degree of the equation is number of points minus 1.
n = (Number of points) - 1
Now having said that, let's assume you have 5 points that need to be fitted and I am going to define them in a variable:
var points = [[0,0], [2,3], [4,-1], [5,7], [6,9]]
Please be noted the array of the points have been ordered by the x values which you need to do.
Then the equation would be:
f(x) = a1*x^4 + a2*x^3 + a3*x^2 + a4*x + a5
Now based on definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_interpolation#Constructing_the_interpolation_polynomial), the coefficients are computed like this:
Now you need to used the referenced page to come up with the coefficient.
It is not that complicated, for the polynomial interpolation of degree n you get the following equation:
p(x) = c0 + c1 * x + c2 * x^2 + ... + cn * x^n = y
This means we need n + 1 genes for the coefficients c0 to cn.
The fitness function is the sum of all squared distances from the points to the curve, below is the formula for the squared distance. Like this a smaller value is obviously better, if you don't want that you can take the inverse (1 / sum of squared distances):
d_squared(xi, yi) = (yi - p(xi))^2
I think for faster conversion you could limit the mutation, e.g. when mutating choose a new value with 20% probability between min and max (e.g. -1000 and 1000) and with 80% probabilty a random factor between 0.8 and 1.2 with which you multiply the old value.
Input: S = {p1, . . . , pn}, n points on 2D plane each point is given by its x and y-coordinate.
For simplicity, we assume:
The origin (0, 0) is NOT in S.
Any line L passing through (0, 0) contains at most one point in S.
No three points in S lie on the same line.
If we pick any three points from S, we can form a triangle. So the total number of triangles that can be formed this way is Θ(n^3).
Some of these triangles contain (0, 0), some do not.
Problem: Calculate the number of triangles that contain (0, 0).
You may assume we have an O(1) time function Test(pi, pj , pk) that, given three points pi, pj , pk in S, returns 1, if the triangle formed by {pi, pj , pk} contains (0, 0), and returns 0 otherwise. It’s trivial to solve the problem in Θ(n^3) time (just enumerate and test all triangles).
Describe an algorithm for solving this problem with O(n log n) run time.
My analysis of the above problem leads to the following conclusion
There are 4 coordinates ( + ,+ ) , ( + ,- ) , ( -, - ), ( -, + ) { x and y coordinate > 0 or not }.
Let
s1 = coordinate x < 0 and y > 0
s2 = x > 0 , y > 0
s3 = x < 0 , y < 0
s4 = x > 0 , y < 0
Now we need to do the testing of points in between sets of the following combinations only
S1 S2 S3
S1 S1 S4
S2 S2 S3
S3 S3 S2
S1 S4 S4
S1 S3 S4
S1 S2 S4
S2 S3 S4
I now need to test the points in the above combination of sets only ( e.g. one point from s1 , one point from s2 and one point from s3 < first combinaton > ) and see the points contain (0,0) by calling Test function ( which is assumed as constant time function here) .
Can someone guide me on this ?
Image added below for clarification on why only some subsets (s1,s2 , s4 ) can contain (0,0) and some ( s1,s1,s3) cannot.
I'm guessing we're in the same class (based on the strange wording of the question), so now that the due date is past, I feel alright giving out my solution. I managed to find the n log n algorithm, which, as the question stated, is more a matter of cleverly transforming the problem, and less of a Dynamic Programming / DaC solution.
Note: This is not an exhaustive proof, I leave that to you.
First, some visual observations. Take some triangle that obviously contains the origin.
Then, convert the points to vectors.
Convince yourself that any selection of three points, one from each vector, describes a triangle that also contains the origin.
It also follows that, if you perform the above steps on a triangle that doesn't enclose the origin, any combination of points along those vectors will also not contain the origin.
The main point to get from this is, the magnitude of the vector does not matter, only the direction. Additionally, a hint to the question says that "any line crossing (0,0) only contains one point in S", from which we can extrapolate that the direction of each vector is unique.
So, if only the angle matters, it would follow that there is some logic that determines what range of points, given two points, could possibly form a triangle that encloses the origin. For simplicity, we'll assume we've taken all the points in S and converted them to vectors, then normalized them, effectively making all points lie on the unit circle.
So, take two points along this circle.
Then, draw a line from each point through the origin and to the opposite side of the circle.
It follows that, given the two points, any point that lies along the red arc can form a triangle.
So our algorithm should do the following:
Take each point in S. Make a secondary array A, and for each point, add the angle along the unit circle (atan2(x,y)) to A (0 ≤ Ai ≤ 2π). Let's assume this is O(n)
Sort A by increasing. O(n log n), assuming we use Merge Sort.
Count the number of triangles possible for each pair (Ai,Aj). This means that we count the number of Ai + π ≤ Ak ≤ Aj + π. Since the array is sorted, we can use a Binary Search to find the indices of Ai + π and Aj + π, which is O(2 log n) = O(log n)
However, we run into a problem, there are n^2 points, and if we have to do an O(log n) search for each, we have O(n^2 log n). So, we need to make one more observation.
Given some Ai < Aj, we'll say Tij describes the number of triangles possible, as calculated by the above method. Then, given a third Ak > Aj, we know that Tij ≤ Tik, as the number of points between Ai + π and Ak + π must be at least as many as there are betwen Ai + π and Aj + π. In fact, it is exactly the count between Ai + π and Aj + π, plus the count between Aj + π and Ak + π. Since we already know the count between Ai + π and Aj + π, we don't need to recalculate it - we only need to calculate the number between Aj + π and Ak + π, then add the previous count. It follows that:
A(n) = count(A(n),A(n-1)) + count(A(n-1),A(n-2)) + ... + count(A(1),A(0))
And this means we don't need to check all n^2 pairs, we only need to check consecutive pairs - so, only n-1.
So, all the above can give us the following psuedocode solution.
int triangleCount(point P[],int n)
int A[n], C[n], totalCount = 0;
for(i=0...n)
A[i] = atan2(P[i].x,P[i].y);
mergeSort(A);
int midPoint = binarySearch(A,π);
for(i=0...midPoint-1)
int left = A[i] + π, right = A[i+1] + π;
C[i] = binarySearch(a,right) - binarySearch(a,left);
for(j=0...i)
totalCount += C[j]
return totalCount;
It seems that in the worst case there are Θ(n3) triangles containing the origin, and since you need them all, the answer is no, there is no better algorithm.
For a worst case consider a regular polygon of an odd degree n, centered at the origin.
Here is an outline of the calculations. A chord connecting two vertices which are k < n/2 vertices apart is a base for Θ(k) triangles. Fix a vertex; its contribution is a sum over all chords coming from it, yielding Θ(n2), and a total (a contribution of all n vertices) is Θ(n3) (each triangle is counted 3 times, which doesn't affect the asymptotic).
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
This question does not appear to be about programming within the scope defined in the help center.
Closed 9 years ago.
Improve this question
I read the method to calculate the square root of any number and the algorithm is as follows:
double findSquareRoot(int n) {
double x = n;
double y = 1;
double e = 0.00001;
while(x-y >= e) {
x = (x+y)/2;
y = n/x;
}
return x;
}
My question regarding this method are
How it calculates the square root? I didn't understand the mathematics behind this. How x=(x+y)/2 and y=n/x converges to square root of n. Explain this mathematics.
What is the complexity of this algorithm?
It is easy to see if you do some runs and print the successive values of x and y. For example for 100:
50.5 1.9801980198019802
26.24009900990099 3.8109612300726345
15.025530119986813 6.655339226067038
10.840434673026925 9.224722348894286
10.032578510960604 9.96752728032478
10.000052895642693 9.999947104637101
10.000000000139897 9.999999999860103
See, the trick is that if x is not the square root of n, then it is above or below the real root, and n/x is always on the other side. So if you calculate the midpoint of x and n/x it will be somewhat nearer to the real root.
And about the complexity, it is actually unbounded, because the real root will never reached. That's why you have the e parameter.
This is a typical application of Newton's method for calculating the square root of n. You're calculating the limit of the sequence:
x_0 = n
x_{i+1} = (x_i + n / x_i) / 2
Your variable x is the current term x_i and your variable y is n / x_i.
To understand why you have to calculate this limit, you need to think of the function:
f(x) = x^2 - n
You want to find the root of this function. Its derivative is
f'(x) = 2 * x
and Newton's method gives you the formula:
x_{i+1} = x_i - f(x_i) / f'(x_1) = ... = (x_i + n / x_i) / 2
For completeness, I'm copying here the rationale from #rodrigo's answer, combined with my comment to it. This is helpful if you want to forget about Newton's method and try to understand this algorithm alone.
The trick is that if x is not the square root of n, then it is
an approximation which lies either above or below the real root, and y = n/x is always on the
other side. So if you calculate the midpoint of (x+y)/2, it will be
nearer to the real root than the worst of these two approximations
(x or y). When x and y are close enough, you're done.
This will also help you find the complexity of the algorithm. Say that d is the distance of the worst of the two approximations to the real root r. Then the distance between the midpoint (x+y)/2 and r is at most d/2 (it will help you if you draw a line to visualize this). This means that, with each iteration, the distance is halved. Therefore, the worst-case complexity is logarithmic w.r.t. to the distance of the initial approximation and the precision that is sought. For the given program, it is
log(|n-sqrt(n)|/epsilon)
I think all information can be found in wikipedia.
The basic idea is that if x is an overestimate to the square root of a non-negative real number S then S/x, will be an underestimate and so the average of these two numbers may reasonably be expected to provide a better approximation.
With each iteration this algorithm doubles correct digits in answer, so complexity is linear to desired accuracy's logarithm.
Why does it work? As stated here, if you will do infinite iterations you'll get some value, let's name it L. L has to satisfy equasion L = (L + N/L)/2 (as in algorithm), so L = sqrt(N). If you're worried about convergence, you may calculate squared relative errors for each iteration (Ek is error, Ak is computed value):
Ek = (Ak/sqrt(N) - 1)²
if:
Ak = (Ak-1 + N/Ak-1)/2 and Ak = sqrt(N)(sqrt(Ek) + 1)
you may derive recurrence relation for Ek:
Ek = Ek-1²/[4(sqrt(Ek-1) + 1)²]
and limit of it is 0, so limit of A1,A2... sequence is sqrt(N).
The mathematical explanation is that, over a small range, the arithmetic mean is a reasonable approximation to the geometric mean, which is used to calculate the square root. As the iterations get closer to the true square root, the difference between the arithmetic mean and the geometric mean vanishes, and the approximation gets very close. Here is my favorite version of Heron's algorithm, which first normalizes the input n over the range 1 ≤ n < 4, then unrolls the loop for a fixed number of iterations that is guaranteed to converge.
def root(n):
if n < 1: return root(n*4) / 2
if 4 <= n: return root(n/4) * 2
x = (n+1) / 2
x = (x + n/x) / 2
x = (x + n/x) / 2
x = (x + n/x) / 2
x = (x + n/x) / 2
x = (x + n/x) / 2
return x
I discuss several programs to calculate the square root at my blog.
Consider some points on a 2d plane and function f(x)=ax, where b=0. Let's say a point is a 1x1 square.
Now we want to tell how many points is between f(x) function and y line, as in picture below.
Black points are valid, white not. We also say point is valid if it:
intersects with the y axis;
or with the function f(x);
or is between them.
As denoted in the picture :
How can we solve this, assuming that we don't remove any of the points and we don't add them? Is there any other approach than standard brute force?
If I am understanding this right the points are random and given to you by their coordinates, and the line is also given to you. If that is the case, there cannot be any a priori knowledge about any relationship between the points, so you'd have to go through them, in the order given, and compare their x coordinate with 0 and their y coordinate with f(x). If a point passes the check you increment the counter, otherwise you don't. The algorithm runs in O(n) time and I highly doubt you can do any better than that without some extra information about the points.
The question is quite unclear but it appears from comment "I mean find that a in f(x)=ax to have maximum points which are valid and their amount doesn't exceed some value X" that you want to find a such that N(a)=X, where by N(a) I mean number of points right of the y axis and above line y=ax; or if no such a exists, find a such that m = N(a)<X and N(b)<m implies N(b)<X.
Here's an O(n*ln(n)) algorithm: For each point p, excluding any p below y=0, compute slope M_p as ratio of p's y and x coordinates, or DBL_MAX if x=0. Sort the M's into ascending order (this is the O(n*ln(n)) step), and call the sorted array S.
Now we will set up an array T such that when any X is given, S[T[X-1]] is a slope that will place X points on or above that slope:
S[n] = DBL_MAX;
for (k=0, j=n-1; k<=n; --j) {
T[j] = k;
do ++k; while (S[k]==S[k-1] && k<=n);
}
Thereafter, let any X be given. Let h = T[X-1]. If h<n then N(S[h]) <= X; if h==n, there are multiple points on the Y axis and no finite slope will work.
This algorithm uses time O(n*ln(n)) and space O(n) to preprocess a set of n first-quadrant points, and thereafter uses time O(1) to find an a for any given X, 0 < X <= n, such that N(a) = X, if such a exists, else returns a such that N(a) < X < N(b) if b>a, else returns DBL_MAX.
Using assorted matrix math, I've solved a system of equations resulting in coefficients for a polynomial of degree 'n'
Ax^(n-1) + Bx^(n-2) + ... + Z
I then evaulate the polynomial over a given x range, essentially I'm rendering the polynomial curve. Now here's the catch. I've done this work in one coordinate system we'll call "data space". Now I need to present the same curve in another coordinate space. It is easy to transform input/output to and from the coordinate spaces, but the end user is only interested in the coefficients [A,B,....,Z] since they can reconstruct the polynomial on their own. How can I present a second set of coefficients [A',B',....,Z'] which represent the same shaped curve in a different coordinate system.
If it helps, I'm working in 2D space. Plain old x's and y's. I also feel like this may involve multiplying the coefficients by a transformation matrix? Would it some incorporate the scale/translation factor between the coordinate systems? Would it be the inverse of this matrix? I feel like I'm headed in the right direction...
Update: Coordinate systems are linearly related. Would have been useful info eh?
The problem statement is slightly unclear, so first I will clarify my own interpretation of it:
You have a polynomial function
f(x) = Cnxn + Cn-1xn-1 + ... + C0
[I changed A, B, ... Z into Cn, Cn-1, ..., C0 to more easily work with linear algebra below.]
Then you also have a transformation such as: z = ax + b that you want to use to find coefficients for the same polynomial, but in terms of z:
f(z) = Dnzn + Dn-1zn-1 + ... + D0
This can be done pretty easily with some linear algebra. In particular, you can define an (n+1)×(n+1) matrix T which allows us to do the matrix multiplication
d = T * c ,
where d is a column vector with top entry D0, to last entry Dn, column vector c is similar for the Ci coefficients, and matrix T has (i,j)-th [ith row, jth column] entry tij given by
tij = (j choose i) ai bj-i.
Where (j choose i) is the binomial coefficient, and = 0 when i > j. Also, unlike standard matrices, I'm thinking that i,j each range from 0 to n (usually you start at 1).
This is basically a nice way to write out the expansion and re-compression of the polynomial when you plug in z=ax+b by hand and use the binomial theorem.
If I understand your question correctly, there is no guarantee that the function will remain polynomial after you change coordinates. For example, let y=x^2, and the new coordinate system x'=y, y'=x. Now the equation becomes y' = sqrt(x'), which isn't polynomial.
Tyler's answer is the right answer if you have to compute this change of variable z = ax+b many times (I mean for many different polynomials). On the other hand, if you have to do it just once, it is much faster to combine the computation of the coefficients of the matrix with the final evaluation. The best way to do it is to symbolically evaluate your polynomial at point (ax+b) by Hörner's method:
you store the polynomial coefficients in a vector V (at the beginning, all coefficients are zero), and for i = n to 0, you multiply it by (ax+b) and add Ci.
adding Ci means adding it to the constant term
multiplying by (ax+b) means multiplying all coefficients by b into a vector K1, multiplying all coefficients by a and shifting them away from the constant term into a vector K2, and putting K1+K2 back into V.
This will be easier to program, and faster to compute.
Note that changing y into w = cy+d is really easy. Finally, as mattiast points out, a general change of coordinates will not give you a polynomial.
Technical note: if you still want to compute matrix T (as defined by Tyler), you should compute it by using a weighted version of Pascal's rule (this is what the Hörner computation does implicitely):
ti,j = b ti,j-1 + a ti-1,j-1
This way, you compute it simply, column after column, from left to right.
You have the equation:
y = Ax^(n-1) + Bx^(n-2) + ... + Z
In xy space, and you want it in some x'y' space. What you need is transformation functions f(x) = x' and g(y) = y' (or h(x') = x and j(y') = y). In the first case you need to solve for x and solve for y. Once you have x and y, you can substituted those results into your original equation and solve for y'.
Whether or not this is trivial depends on the complexity of the functions used to transform from one space to another. For example, equations such as:
5x = x' and 10y = y'
are extremely easy to solve for the result
y' = 2Ax'^(n-1) + 2Bx'^(n-2) + ... + 10Z
If the input spaces are linearly related, then yes, a matrix should be able to transform one set of coefficients to another. For example, if you had your polynomial in your "original" x-space:
ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d
and you wanted to transform into a different w-space where w = px+q
then you want to find a', b', c', and d' such that
ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d = a'w^3 + b'w^2 + c'w + d'
and with some algebra,
a'w^3 + b'w^2 + c'w + d' = a'p^3x^3 + 3a'p^2qx^2 + 3a'pq^2x + a'q^3 + b'p^2x^2 + 2b'pqx + b'q^2 + c'px + c'q + d'
therefore
a = a'p^3
b = 3a'p^2q + b'p^2
c = 3a'pq^2 + 2b'pq + c'p
d = a'q^3 + b'q^2 + c'q + d'
which can be rewritten as a matrix problem and solved.