This was the bar-raiser question at a company I recently interviewed at. The premise is, a movie theatre has to follow a distance rule where every two seated individuals must have at least six feet distance between them. We are given a list of N non-negative integers where list[k] is the distance between seat k and seat k + 1 and a single row has N+1 seats. We need to figure out the number of valid seating arrangements.
EDIT: After thinking about it more this is what I got so far
def count(seats):
# No seats then no arrangements can be made
if seats == 0:
return 0
elif seats == 1:
# 1 seat means 2 arrangements -- leave it empty (skip) or occupy it
return 2
if list[seats-1] < 6:
return count(seats - 1) + counts(seats - k(seats))
else:
return count(seats - 1)
Recall that list will contain the distance between seat i and seat i+1 so at every seat I will check if the distance between the current seat and the previous one is >= 6 or < 6. If its less than 6 then I can skip the current seat or I can occupy it. Now here's the tricky bit, if I decide to occupy the seat my subproblem is not seats - 1, it will seats - (# of seats to skip to get to the next valid seat). I'm not sure how to find this one. The other case is more trivial, where the distance between the previous seat and current is >= 6 so whether I occupy the current seat or not my subproblem, number of seats, shrinks by one.
You can use two pointer technique and dynamic programming to solve this problem.
Here dp[i] stands for the number of valid combinations where ith seat is the last one used (last -> greatest index).
Code:
def count(distances):
pref_dist = answer = 0
pos = pos_sum = pos_dist = 0
dp = [1] * (len(distances) + 1)
for i in range(len(distances)):
pref_dist += distances[i]
while(pref_dist - pos_dist >= 6):
pos_dist += distances[pos]
pos_sum += dp[pos]
pos += 1
dp[i + 1] += pos_sum
return sum(dp) + 1
Time complexity:
It is O(n) where n is the number of seats (not O(n^2)) because while condition is true at most n times in whole code execution (pointer pos never decreases, every time the condition is true then pos is increased by one and pos upper limit is n) and every operation inside it use a constant amount of time.
Examples:
Six seats and distance array [5, 2, 4, 1, 2]
count([5, 2, 4, 1, 2]) -> 16
These are the valid combinations (1 means taken):
000000 101000 000010 100001
100000 000100 100010 010001
010000 100100 010010 001001
001000 010100 000001 101001
Four seats and distance array [8, 10, 16]
count([8, 10, 6]) -> 16
Every combination is a valid combination. Four seats => 2^4 combinations.
Related
Problem:
Fuel Injection Perfection
Commander Lambda has asked for your help to refine the automatic quantum antimatter fuel injection system for her LAMBCHOP doomsday device. It's a great chance for you to get a closer look at the LAMBCHOP - and maybe sneak in a bit of sabotage while you're at it - so you took the job gladly.
Quantum antimatter fuel comes in small pellets, which is convenient since the many moving parts of the LAMBCHOP each need to be fed fuel one pellet at a time. However, minions dump pellets in bulk into the fuel intake. You need to figure out the most efficient way to sort and shift the pellets down to a single pellet at a time.
The fuel control mechanisms have three operations:
Add one fuel pellet Remove one fuel pellet Divide the entire group of fuel pellets by 2 (due to the destructive energy released when a quantum antimatter pellet is cut in half, the safety controls will only allow this to happen if there is an even number of pellets) Write a function called solution(n) which takes a positive integer as a string and returns the minimum number of operations needed to transform the number of pellets to 1. The fuel intake control panel can only display a number up to 309 digits long, so there won't ever be more pellets than you can express in that many digits.
For example: solution(4) returns 2: 4 -> 2 -> 1 solution(15) returns 5: 15 -> 16 -> 8 -> 4 -> 2 -> 1
Test cases
Inputs: (string) n = "4" Output: (int) 2
Inputs: (string) n = "15" Output: (int) 5
my code:
def solution(n):
n = int(n)
if n == 2:
return 1
if n % 2 != 0:
return min(solution(n + 1), solution(n - 1)) + 1
else:
return solution(int(n / 2)) + 1
This is the solution that I came up with with passes 4 out of 10 of the test cases. It seems to be working fine so im wondering if it is because of the extensive runtime. I thought of applying memoization but im not sure how to do it(or if it is even possible). Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
There are several issues to consider:
First, you don't handle the n == "1" case properly (operations = 0).
Next, by default, Python has a limit of 1000 recursions. If we compute the log2 of a 309 digit number, we expect to make a minimum of 1025 divisions to reach 1. And if each of those returns an odd result, we'd need to triple that to 3075 recursive operations. So, we need to bump up Python's recursion limit.
Finally, for each of those divisions that does return an odd value, we'll be spawning two recursive division trees (+1 and -1). These trees will not only increase the number of recursions, but can also be highly redundant. Which is where memoization comes in:
import sys
from functools import lru_cache
sys.setrecursionlimit(3333) # estimated by trial and error
#lru_cache()
def solution(n):
n = int(n)
if n <= 2:
return n - 1
if n % 2 == 0:
return solution(n // 2) + 1
return min(solution(n + 1), solution(n - 1)) + 1
print(solution("4"))
print(solution("15"))
print(solution(str(10**309 - 1)))
OUTPUT
> time python3 test.py
2
5
1278
0.043u 0.010s 0:00.05 100.0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
>
So, bottom line is handle "1", increase your recursion limit, and add memoization. Then you should be able to solve this problem easily.
There are more memory- and runtime-efficient ways to solve the problem, which is what Google is testing for with their constraints. Every time you recurse a function, you put another call on the stack, or 2 calls when you recurse twice on each function call. While they seem basic, a while loop was a lot faster for me.
Think of the number in binary - when ever you have a streak of 1s >1 in length at LSB side of the number, it makes sense to add 1 (which will flip that streak to all 0s but add another bit to the overall length), then shift right until you find another 1 in the LSB position. You can solve it in a fixed memory block in O(n) using just a while loop.
If you don't want or can't use functools, you can build your own cache this way :
cache = {}
def solution_rec(n):
n = int(n)
if n in cache:
return cache[n]
else:
if n <= 1:
return 0
if n == 2:
return 1
if n % 2 == 0:
div = n / 2
cache[div] = solution(div)
return cache[div] + 1
else:
plus = n + 1
minus = n - 1
cache[plus] = solution(n + 1)
cache[minus] = solution(n - 1)
return min(cache[plus], cache[minus]) + 1
However, even if it runs much faster and has less recursive calls, it's still too much recursive calls for Python default configuration if you test the 309 digits limit.
it works if you set sys.setrecursionlimit to 1562.
An implementation of #rreagan3's solution, with the exception that an input of 3 should lead to a subtraction rather than an addition even through 3 has a streak of 1's on the LSB side:
def solution(n):
n = int(n)
count = 0
while n > 1:
if n & 1 == 0:
n >>= 1
elif n & 2 and n != 3:
n += 1
else:
n -= 1 # can also be: n &= -2
count += 1
return count
Demo: https://replit.com/#blhsing/SlateblueVeneratedFactor
Really struggling to solve this problem correctly.
my solution, that correctly solves some of the test cases is here:
Really hoping that someone can help me understand what's missing, or point me to solutions that I can learn from
Problem Description:
administration is considering to house each team in several units with at least 5 people per unit. A team can have from 5 to 100 members, depending on the sport they do. For example, if there are 16 team members, there are 6 ways to distribute the team members into units: (1) one unit with 16 team members; (2) two units with 5 and 11 team members, respectively; (3) two units with 6 and 10 team members, respectively; (4) two units with 7 and 9 team members, respectively; (5) two units with 8 team members each; (6) two units with 5 team members each plus a third unit with 6 team members. This list might become quite lengthy for a large team size.
In order to see how many choices to distribute the team members there are, the administration would like to have a computer program that computes for a number n the number m(n) of possible ways to distribute the team members into the units allocated, with at least 5 people per unit. Note that equivalent distributions like 5 + 5 + 6, 5 + 6 + 5 and 6 + 5 + 5 are counted only once. So m(16) = 6 (as seen above), m(17) = 7 (namely 17, 5 + 12, 6 + 11, 7 + 10, 8 + 9, 5 + 5 + 7, 5 + 6 + 6) and m(20) = 13.
The computer program should read the number n and compute m(n).
The recursion is pretty simple: We can count the partitions of n items that include the lower bound, and those that don't, and add them together. If we include the lower bound (lb), then there are n - lb more items to place, and our lower bound hasn't changed. If we're not including it, then there are still n items to place, but our lb has increased. Our base cases are simple: when the lower bound is higher than the number of items, there are no partitions. When they're equal, there is one. This code should do it:
def count (n, lb):
if (lb > n):
return 0
if (lb == n):
return 1
return count (n - lb, lb) + count (n, lb + 1)
count (20, 5) #=> 13
If you want to test different values, you can use a JS version of this:
const count = (n, lb) =>
lb > n
? 0
: lb == n
? 1
: count (n - lb, lb) + count (n, lb + 1)
console .log (count (20, 5))
And if you want to see the actual values instead of the counts, you can run this variant:
const count = (n, lb) =>
lb > n
? []
: lb == n
? [[n]]
: [
... count (n - lb, lb) .map (r => [lb, ...r]),
... count (n , lb + 1)
]
console .log (count (17, 5))
Combinations without repetitions look like this, when the number of elements to choose from (n) is 5 and elements chosen (r) is 3:
0 1 2
0 1 3
0 1 4
0 2 3
0 2 4
0 3 4
1 2 3
1 2 4
1 3 4
2 3 4
As n and r grows the amount of combinations gets large pretty quickly. For (n,r) = (200,4) the number of combinations is 64684950.
It is easy to iterate the list with r nested for-loops, where the initial iterating value of each for loop is greater than the current iterating value of the for loop in which it is nested, as in this jsfiddle example:
https://dotnetfiddle.net/wHWK5o
What I would like is a function that calculates only one combination based on its index. Something like this:
tuple combination(i,n,r) {
return [combination with index i, when the number of elements to choose from is n and elements chosen is r]
Does anyone know if this is doable?
You would first need to impose some sort of ordering on the set of all combinations available for a given n and r, such that a linear index makes sense. I suggest we agree to keep our combinations in increasing order (or, at least, the indices of the individual elements), as in your example. How then can we go from a linear index to a combination?
Let us first build some intuition for the problem. Suppose we have n = 5 (e.g. the set {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}) and r = 3. How many unique combinations are there in this case? The answer is of course 5-choose-3, which evaluates to 10. Since we will sort our combinations in increasing order, consider for a minute how many combinations remain once we have exhausted all those starting with 0. This must be 4-choose-3, or 4 in total. In such a case, if we are looking for the combination at index 7 initially, this implies we must subtract 10 - 4 = 6 and search for the combination at index 1 in the set {1, 2, 3, 4}. This process continues until we find a new index that is smaller than this offset.
Once this process concludes, we know the first digit. Then we only need to determine the remaining r - 1 digits! The algorithm thus takes shape as follows (in Python, but this should not be too difficult to translate),
from math import factorial
def choose(n, k):
return factorial(n) // (factorial(k) * factorial(n - k))
def combination_at_idx(idx, elems, r):
if len(elems) == r:
# We are looking for r elements in a list of size r - thus, we need
# each element.
return elems
if len(elems) == 0 or len(elems) < r:
return []
combinations = choose(len(elems), r) # total number of combinations
remains = choose(len(elems) - 1, r) # combinations after selection
offset = combinations - remains
if idx >= offset: # combination does not start with first element
return combination_at_idx(idx - offset, elems[1:], r)
# We now know the first element of the combination, but *not* yet the next
# r - 1 elements. These need to be computed as well, again recursively.
return [elems[0]] + combination_at_idx(idx, elems[1:], r - 1)
Test-driving this with your initial input,
N = 5
R = 3
for idx in range(choose(N, R)):
print(idx, combination_at_idx(idx, list(range(N)), R))
I find,
0 [0, 1, 2]
1 [0, 1, 3]
2 [0, 1, 4]
3 [0, 2, 3]
4 [0, 2, 4]
5 [0, 3, 4]
6 [1, 2, 3]
7 [1, 2, 4]
8 [1, 3, 4]
9 [2, 3, 4]
Where the linear index is zero-based.
Start with the first element of the result. The value of that element depends on the number of combinations you can get with smaller elements. For each such smaller first element, the number of combinations with first element k is n − k − 1 choose r − 1, with potentially some of-by-one corrections. So you would sum over a bunch of binomial coefficients. Wolfram Alpha can help you compute such a sum, but the result still has a binomial coefficient in it. Solving for the largest k such that the sum doesn't exceed your given index i is a computation you can't do with something as simple as e.g. a square root. You need a loop to test possible values, e.g. like this:
def first_naive(i, n, r):
"""Find first element and index of first combination with that first element.
Returns a tuple of value and index.
Example: first_naive(8, 5, 3) returns (1, 6) because the combination with
index 8 is [1, 3, 4] so it starts with 1, and because the first combination
that starts with 1 is [1, 2, 3] which has index 6.
"""
s1 = 0
for k in range(n):
s2 = s1 + choose(n - k - 1, r - 1)
if i < s2:
return k, s1
s1 = s2
You can reduce the O(n) loop iterations to O(log n) steps using bisection, which is particularly relevant for large n. In that case I find it easier to think about numbering items from the end of your list. In the case of n = 5 and r = 3 you get choose(2, 2)=1 combinations starting with 2, choose(3,2)=3 combinations starting with 1 and choose(4,2)=6 combinations starting with 0. So in the general choose(n,r) binomial coefficient you increase the n with each step, and keep the r. Taking into account that sum(choose(k,r) for k in range(r,n+1)) can be simplified to choose(n+1,r+1), you can eventually come up with bisection conditions like the following:
def first_bisect(i, n, r):
nCr = choose(n, r)
k1 = r - 1
s1 = nCr
k2 = n
s2 = 0
while k2 - k1 > 1:
k3 = (k1 + k2) // 2
s3 = nCr - choose(k3, r)
if s3 <= i:
k2, s2 = k3, s3
else:
k1, s1 = k3, s3
return n - k2, s2
Once you know the first element to be k, you also know the index of the first combination with that same first element (also returned from my function above). You can use the difference between that first index and your actual index as input to a recursive call. The recursive call would be for r − 1 elements chosen from n − k − 1. And you'd add k + 1 to each element from the recursive call, since the top level returns values starting at 0 while the next element has to be greater than k in order to avoid duplication.
def combination(i, n, r):
"""Compute combination with a given index.
Equivalent to list(itertools.combinations(range(n), r))[i].
Each combination is represented as a tuple of ascending elements, and
combinations are ordered lexicograplically.
Args:
i: zero-based index of the combination
n: number of possible values, will be taken from range(n)
r: number of elements in result list
"""
if r == 0:
return []
k, ik = first_bisect(i, n, r)
return tuple([k] + [j + k + 1 for j in combination(i - ik, n - k - 1, r - 1)])
I've got a complete working example, including an implementation of choose, more detailed doc strings and tests for some basic assumptions.
I'm writing a diploma about vaccines. There is a region, its population and 12 month. There is an array of 12 values from 0 to 1 with step 0.01. It means which part of population should we vaccinate in every month.
For example if we have array = [0.1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]. That means that we should vaccinate 0.1 of region population only in first month.
Another array = [0, 0.23,0,0,0,0,0,0, 0.02,0,0,0]. It means that we should vaccinate 0.23 of region population in second month and 0.02 of region population in 9th month.
So the question is: how to generate (using 3 loops) 12(months) * 12(times of vaccinating) * 100 (number of steps from 0 to 1) = 14_400 number of arrays that will contain every version of these combinations.
For now I have this code:
for(int month = 0;month<12;month++){
for (double step = 0;step<=1;step+=0.01){
double[] arr = new double[12];
arr[month] = step;
}
}
I need to add 3d loop that will vary number of vaccinating per year.
Have no idea how to write it.
Idk if it is understandable.
Hope u get it otherwise ask me, please.
You have 101 variants for the first month 0.00, 0.01..1.00
And 101 variants for the second month - same values.
And 101*101 possible combinations for two months.
Continuing - for all 12 months you have 101^12 variants ~ 10^24
It is not possible to generate and store so many combinations (at least in the current decade)
If step is larger than 0.01, then combination count might be reliable. General formula is P=N^M where N is number of variants per month, M is number of months
You can traverse all combinations representing all integers in range 0..P-1 in N-ric numeral system. Or make digit counter:
fill array D[12] with zeros
repeat
increment element at the last index by step value
if it reaches the limit, make it zero
and increment element at the next index
until the first element reaches the limit
It is similar to counting 08, 09, here we cannot increment 9, so make 10 and so on
s = 1
m = 3
mx = 3
l = [0]*m
i = 0
while i < m:
print([x/3 for x in l])
i = 0
l[i] += s
while (i < m) and l[i] > mx:
l[i] = 0
i += 1
if i < m:
l[i] += s
Python code prints 64 ((mx/s+1)^m=4^3) variants like [0.3333, 0.6666, 0.0]
Suppose there is number s=12 , now i want to make sequence with the element a1+a2+.....+an=12.
The criteria is as follows-
n must be minimum.
a1 and an must be 1;
ai can differs a(i-1) by only 1,0 and -1.
for s=12 the result is 6.
So how to find the minimum value of n.
Algorithm for finding n from given s:
1.Find q = FLOOR( SQRT(s-1) )
2.Find r = q^2 + q
3.If s <= r then n = 2q, else n = 2q + 1
Example: s = 12
q = FLOOR( SQRT(12-1) ) = FLOOR(SQRT(11) = 3
r = 3^2 + 3 = 12
12 <= 12, therefore n = 2*3 = 6
Example: s = 160
q = FLOOR( SQRT(160-1) ) = FLOOR(SQRT(159) = 12
r = 12^2 + 12 = 156
159 > 156, therefore n = 2*12 + 1 = 25
and the 25-numbers sequence for
159: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,10,10,9,10,10,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
Here's a way to visualize the solution.
First, draw the smallest triangle (rows containing successful odd numbers of stars) that has a greater or equal number of stars to n. In this case, we draw a 16-star triangle.
*
***
*****
*******
Then we have to remove 16 - 12 = 4 more stars. We do this diagonally starting from the top.
1
**2
****3
******4
The result is:
**
****
******
Finally, add up the column heights to get the final answer:
1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 1.
There are two cases: s odd and s even. When s is odd, you have the sequence:
1, 2, 3, ..., (s-1)/2, (s-1)/2, (s-1)/2-1, (s-1)/2-2, ..., 1
when n is even you have:
1, 2, 3, ..., s/2, s/2-1, s/2-2, ..., 1
The maximum possible for any given series of length n is:
n is even => (n^2+2n)/4
n is odd => (n+1)^2/4
These two results are arrived at easily enough by looking at the simple arithmetic sum of series where in the case of n even it is twice the sum of the series 1...n/2. In the case of n odd it is twice the sum of the series 1...(n-1)/2 and add on n+1/2 (the middle element).
Clearly you can generate any positive number that is less than this max as long as n>3.
So the problem then becomes finding the smallest n with a max greater than your target.
Algorithmically I'd go for:
Find (sqrt(4*s)-1) and round up to the next odd number. Call this M. This is an easy to work out value and will represent the lowest odd n that will work.
Check M-1 to see if its max sum is greater than s. If so then that your n is M-1. Otherwise your n is M.
Thank all you answer me. I derived a simpler solution. The algorithm looks like-
First find what is the maximum sum that can be made using n element-
if n=1 -> 1 sum=1;
if n=2 -> 1,1 sum=2;
if n=3 -> 1,2,1 sum=4;
if n=4 -> 1,2,2,1 sum=6;
if n=5 -> 1,2,3,2,1 sum=9;
if n=6 -> 1,2,3,3,2,1 sum=12;
So from observation it is clear that form any number,n 9<n<=12 can be
made using 6 element, similarly number
6<n<=9 can be made at using 5 element.
So it require only a binary search to find the number of
element that make a particular number.