Sherlock and Cost on Hackerrank - recursion

Question

It's about this dynamic programming challenge.
If you have a hard time to understand the Problem then see also on AbhishekVermaIIT's post
Basically, you get as input an array B and you construct array A. Fo this array A you need the maximum possible sum with absolute(A[i] - A[i-1]), for i = 1 to N. How to construct array A? --> You can choose for every element A[i] in array A either the values 1 or B[i]. (As you will deduce from the problem description any other value between these two values doesn't make any sense.)
And I came up with this recursive Java solution (without memoization):
static int costHelper(int[] arr, int i) {
if (i < 1) return 0;
int q = max(abs(1 - arr[i-1]) + costHelper(arr, i-1) , abs(arr[i] - arr[i-1]) + costHelper(arr, i-1));
int[] arr1 = new int[i];
for (int j = 0; j < arr1.length-1; j++) {
arr1[j] = arr[j];
}
arr1[i-1] = 1;
int r = max(abs(1 - 1) + costHelper(arr1, i-1) , abs(arr[i] - 1) + costHelper(arr1, i-1));
return max(q , r);
}
static int cost(int[] arr) {
return costHelper(arr, arr.length-1);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] arr = {55, 68, 31, 80, 57, 18, 34, 28, 76, 55};
int result = cost(arr);
System.out.println(result);
}
Basically, I start at the end of the array and check what is maximizing the sum of the last element minus last element - 1. But I have 4 cases:
(1 - arr[i-1])
(arr[i] - arr[i-1])
(1 - 1) // I know, it is not necessary.
(arr[i] -1)
For the 3rd or 4th case I construct a new array one element smaller in size than the input array and with a 1 as the last element.
Now, the result of arr = 55 68 31 80 57 18 34 28 76 55 according to Hackerrank should be 508. But I get 564.
Since it has to be 508 I guess the array should be 1 68 1 80 1 1 34 1 76 1.
For other arrays I get the right answer. For example:
79 6 40 68 68 16 40 63 93 49 91 --> 642 (OK)
100 2 100 2 100 --> 396 (OK)
I don't understand what is wrong with this algorithm.

Answer 1

I'm not sure exactly what's happening with your particular solution but I suspect it might be that the recursive function only has one dimension, i, since we need a way to identify the best previous solution, f(i-1), both if B_(i-1) was chosen and if 1 was chosen at that point, so we can choose the best among them vis-a-vis f(i). (It might help if you could add a description of your algorithm in words.)
Let's look at the brute-force dynamic program: let m[i][j1] represent the best sum-of-abs-diff in A[0..i] when A_i is j1. Then, generally:
m[i][j1] = max(abs(j1 - j0) + m[i-1][j0])
for j0 in [1..B_(i-1)] and j1 in [1..B_i]
Python code:
def cost(arr):
if len(arr) == 1:
return 0
m = [[float('-inf')]*101 for i in xrange(len(arr))]
for i in xrange(1, len(arr)):
for j0 in xrange(1, arr[i-1] + 1):
for j1 in xrange(1, arr[i] + 1):
m[i][j1] = max(m[i][j1], abs(j1 - j0) + (m[i-1][j0] if i > 1 else 0))
return max(m[len(arr) - 1])
That works but times out since we are looping potentially 100*100*10^5 iterations.
I haven't thought through the proof for it, but, as you suggest, apparently we can choose only from either 1 or B_i for each A_i for an optimal solution. This allows us to choose between those directly in a significantly more efficient solution that won't time out:
def cost(arr):
if len(arr) == 1:
return 0
m = [[float('-inf')]*2 for i in xrange(len(arr))]
for i in xrange(1, len(arr)):
for j0 in [1, arr[i-1]]:
for j1 in [1, arr[i]]:
a_i = 0 if j1 == 1 else 1
b_i = 0 if j0 == 1 else 1
m[i][a_i] = max(m[i][a_i], abs(j1 - j0) + (m[i-1][b_i] if i > 1 else 0))
return max(m[len(arr) - 1])
This is a bottom-up tabulation but we could easily convert it to a recursive one using the same idea.

Answer 2

Here is the javascript code with memoization-
function cost(B,n,val) {
if(n==-1){
return 0;
}
let prev1=0,prev2=0;
if(n!=0){
if(dp[n-1][0]==-1)
dp[n-1][0] = cost(B,n-1,1);
if(dp[n-1][1]==-1)
dp[n-1][1] = cost(B,n-1,B[n]);
prev1=dp[n-1][0];
prev2=dp[n-1][1];
}
prev1 = prev1 + Math.abs(val-1);
prev2 = prev2+ Math.abs(val-B[n]);
return Math.max(prev1,prev2);
}
where B->given array,n->total length,val-> 1 or B[n], value considered by the calling function.
Initial call -> Math.max(cost(B,n-2,1),cost(B,n-2,B[n-1]));
BTW, this took me around 3hrs, rather could have easily done with iteration method. :p

Answer 3

//dp[][0] is when a[i]=b[i]
dp[i][0]=max((dp[i-1][0]+abs(b[i]-b[i-1])),(dp[i-1][1]+abs(b[i]-1)));
dp[i][1]=max((dp[i-1][1]+abs(1-1)),(dp[i-1][0]+abs(b[i-1]-1)));
Initially all the elements in dp have the value of 0.
We know that we will get the answer if at any i the value is b[i] or 1. So the final answer is :
max(dp[n-1][0],dp[n-1][1])
dp[i][0] signifies a[i]=b[i] and dp[i][1] signifies a[i]=1.
So at every i we want the maximum of [i-1][0] (previous element is b[i-1]) or [i-1][1] (previous element is 1)