Had a tough time thinking of an appropriate title, but I'm just trying to code something that can auto compute the following simple math problem:
The average value of a,b,c is 25. The average value of b,c is 23. What is the value of 'a'?
For us humans we can easily compute that the value of 'a' is 29, without the need to know b and c. But I'm not sure if this is possible in programming, where we code a function that takes in the average values of 'a,b,c' and 'b,c' and outputs 'a' automatically.
Yes, it is possible to do this. The reason for this is that you can model the sort of problem being described here as a system of linear equations. For example, when you say that the average of a, b, and c is 25, then you're saying that
a / 3 + b / 3 + c / 3 = 25.
Adding in the constraint that the average of b and c is 23 gives the equation
b / 2 + c / 2 = 23.
More generally, any constraint of the form "the average of the variables x1, x2, ..., xn is M" can be written as
x1 / n + x2 / n + ... + xn / n = M.
Once you have all of these constraints written out, solving for the value of a particular variable - or determining that many solutions exists - reduces to solving a system of linear equations. There are a number of techniques to do this, with Gaussian elimination with backpropagation being a particularly common way to do this (though often you'd just hand this to MATLAB or a linear algebra package and have it do the work for you.)
There's no guarantee in general that given a collection of equations the computer can determine whether or not they have a solution or to deduce a value of a variable, but this happens to be one of the nice cases where the shape of the contraints make the problem amenable to exact solutions.
Alright I have figured some things out. To answer the question as per title directly, it's possible to represent average value in programming. 1 possible way is to create a list of map data structures which store the set collection as key (eg. "a,b,c"), while the average value of the set will be the value (eg. 25).
Extract the key and split its string by comma, store into list, then multiply the average value by the size of list to get the total (eg. 25x3 and 23x2). With this, no semantic information will be lost.
As for the context to which I asked this question, the more proper description to the problem is "Given a set of average values of different combinations of variables, is it possible to find the value of each variable?" The answer to this is open. I can't figure it out, but below is an attempt in describing the logic flow if one were to code it out:
Match the lists (from Paragraph 2) against one another in all possible combinations to check if a list contains all elements in another list. If so, substract the lists (eg. abc-bc) as well as the value (eg. 75-46). If upon substracting we only have 1 variable in the collection, then we have found the value for this variable.
If there's still more than 1 variables left such as abcd - bc = ad, then store the values as a map data structure and repeat the process, till the point where the substraction count in the full iteration is 0 for all possible combinations (eg. ac can't substract bc). This is unfortunately not where it ends.
Further solutions may be found by combining the lists (eg. ac + bd = abcd) to get more possible ways to subtract and derive at the answer. When this is the case, you just don't know when to stop trying, and the list of combinations will get exponential. Maybe someone with strong related mathematical theories may be able to prove that upon a certain number of iteration, further additions are useless and hence should stop. Heck, it may even be possible that negative values are also helpful, and hence contradict what I said earlier about 'ac' can't subtract 'bd' (to get a,c,-b,-d). This will give even more combinations to compute.
People with stronger computing science foundations may try what templatetypedef has suggested.
Related
I'm not looking for a specific line a code - just built in functions or common packages that may help me do the following. Basically, something like, write up some code and use this function. I'm stuck on how to actually optimize - should I use SGD?
I have two variables, X, Y. I want to separate Y into 4 groups so that the L2, that is $(Xji | Yi - mean(Xji) | Yi)^2$ is minimized subject to the constraint that there are at least n observations in each group.
How would one go about solving this? I'd imagine you can't do this with the optim function? Basically the algo needs to move 3 values around (there are 3 cutoff points for Y) until L2 is minimized subject to n being a certain size.
Thanks
You could try optim and simply add a penalty if the constraints are not satisfied: since you minimise, add zero if all constraints are okay; otherwise a positive number.
If that does not work, since you only look for three cutoff points, I'd probably try a grid search, i.e. compute the objective function for different levels of the cutoff point; throw away those that violate the constraints, and then keep the best solution.
I' am doing my homework in programming, and I don't know how to solve this problem:
We have a set of n weights, we are putting them on a scale one by one until all weights is used. We also have string of n letters "R" or "L" which means which pen is heavier in that moment, they can't be in balance. There are no weights with same mass. Compute in what order we have to put weights on scale and on which pan.
The goal is to find order of putting weights on scale, so the input string is respected.
Input: number 0 < n < 51, number of weights. Then weights and the string.
Output: in n lines, weight and "R" or "L", side where you put weight. If there are many, output any of them.
Example 1:
Input:
3
10 20 30
LRL
Output:
10 L
20 R
30 L
Example 2:
Input:
3
10 20 30
LLR
Output:
20 L
10 R
30 R
Example 3:
Input:
5
10 20 30 40 50
LLLLR
Output:
50 L
10 L
20 R
30 R
40 R
I already tried to compute it with recursion but unsuccessful. Can someone please help me with this problem or just gave me hints how to solve it.
Since you do not show any code of your own, I'll give you some ideas without code. If you need more help, show more of your work then I can show you Python code that solves your problem.
Your problem is suitable for backtracking. Wikipedia's definition of this algorithm is
Backtracking is a general algorithm for finding all (or some) solutions to some computational problems, notably constraint satisfaction problems, that incrementally builds candidates to the solutions, and abandons a candidate ("backtracks") as soon as it determines that the candidate cannot possibly be completed to a valid solution.
and
Backtracking can be applied only for problems which admit the concept of a "partial candidate solution" and a relatively quick test of whether it can possibly be completed to a valid solution.
Your problem satisfies those requirements. At each stage you need to choose one of the remaining weights and one of the two pans of the scale. When you place the chosen weight on the chosen pan, you determine if the corresponding letter from the input string is satisfied. If not, you reject the choice of weight and pan. If so, you continue by choosing another weight and pan.
Your overall routine first inputs and prepares the data. It then calls a recursive routine that chooses one weight and one pan at each level. Some of the information needed by each level could be put into mutable global variables, but it would be more clear if you pass all needed information as parameters. Each call to the recursive routine needs to pass:
the weights not yet used
the input L/R string not yet used
the current state of the weights on the pans, in a format that can easily be printed when finalized (perhaps an array of ordered pairs of a weight and a pan)
the current weight imbalance of the pans. This could be calculated from the previous parameter, but time would be saved by passing this separately. This would be total of the weights on the right pan minus the total of the weights on the left pan (or vice versa).
Your base case for the recursion is when the unused-weights and unused-letters are empty. You then have finished the search and can print the solution and quit the program. Otherwise you loop over all combinations of one of the unused weights and one of the pans. For each combination, calculate what the new imbalance would be if you placed that weight on that pan. If that new imbalance agrees with the corresponding letter, call the routine recursively with appropriately-modified parameters. If not, do nothing for this weight and pan.
You still have a few choices to make before coding, such as the data structure for the unused weights. Show me some of your own coding efforts then I'll give you my Python code.
Be aware that this could be slow for a large number of weights. For n weights and two pans, the total number of ways to place the weights on the pans is n! * 2**n (that is a factorial and an exponentiation). For n = 50 that is over 3e79, much too large to do. The backtracking avoids most groups of choices, since choices are rejected as soon as possible, but my algorithm could still be slow. There may be a better algorithm than backtracking, but I do not see it. Your problem seems to be designed to be handled by backtracking.
Now that you have shown more effort of your own, here is my un-optimized Python 3 code. This works for all the examples you gave, though I got a different valid solution for your third example.
def weights_on_pans():
def solve(unused_weights, unused_tilts, placement, imbalance):
"""Place the weights on the scales using recursive
backtracking. Return True if successful, False otherwise."""
if not unused_weights:
# Done: print the placement and note that we succeeded
for weight, pan in placement:
print(weight, 'L' if pan < 0 else 'R')
return True # success right now
tilt, *later_tilts = unused_tilts
for weight in unused_weights:
for pan in (-1, 1): # -1 means left, 1 means right
new_imbalance = imbalance + pan * weight
if new_imbalance * tilt > 0: # both negative or both positive
# Continue searching since imbalance in proper direction
if solve(unused_weights - {weight},
later_tilts,
placement + [(weight, pan)],
new_imbalance):
return True # success at a lower level
return False # not yet successful
# Get the inputs from standard input. (This version has no validity checks)
cnt_weights = int(input())
weights = {int(item) for item in input().split()}
letters = input()
# Call the recursive routine with appropriate starting parameters.
tilts = [(-1 if letter == 'L' else 1) for letter in letters]
solve(weights, tilts, [], 0)
weights_on_pans()
The main way I can see to speed up that code is to avoid the O(n) operations in the call to solve in the inner loop. That means perhaps changing the data structure of unused_weights and changing how it, placement, and perhaps unused_tilts/later_tilts are modified to use O(1) operations. Those changes would complicate the code, which is why I did not do them.
I need to write a function that returns on of the numbers (-2,-1,0,1,2) randomly, but I need the average of the output to be a specific number (say, 1.2).
I saw similar questions, but all the answers seem to rely on the target range being wide enough.
Is there a way to do this (without saving state) with this small selection of possible outputs?
UPDATE: I want to use this function for (randomized) testing, as a stub for an expensive function which I don't want to run. The consumer of this function runs it a couple of hundred times and takes an average. I've been using a simple randint function, but the average is always very close to 0, which is not realistic.
Point is, I just need something simple that won't always average to 0. I don't really care what the actual average is. I may have asked the question wrong.
Do you really mean to require that specific value to be the average, or rather the expected value? In other words, if the generated sequence were to contain an extraordinary number of small values in its initial part, should the rest of the sequence atempt to compensate for that in an attempt to get the overall average right? I assume not, I assume you want all your samples to be computed independently (after all, you said you don't want any state), in which case you can only control the expected value.
If you assign a probability pi for each of your possible choices, then the expected value will be the sum of these values, weighted by their probabilities:
EV = ā 2pā2 ā pā1 + p1 + 2p2 = 1.2
As additional constraints you have to require that each of these probabilities is non-negative, and that the above four add up to a value less than 1, with the remainder taken by the fifth probability p0.
there are many possible assignments which satisfy these requirements, and any one will do what you asked for. Which of them are reasonable for your application depends on what that application does.
You can use a PRNG which generates variables uniformly distributed in the range [0,1), and then map these to the cases you described by taking the cumulative sums of the probabilities as cut points.
I just read this interesting question about a random number generator that never generates the same value three consecutive times. This clearly makes the random number generator different from a standard uniform random number generator, but I'm not sure how to quantitatively describe how this generator differs from a generator that didn't have this property.
Suppose that you handed me two random number generators, R and S, where R is a true random number generator and S is a true random number generator that has been modified to never produce the same value three consecutive times. If you didn't tell me which one was R or S, the only way I can think of to detect this would be to run the generators until one of them produced the same value three consecutive times.
My question is - is there a better algorithm for telling the two generators apart? Does the restriction of not producing the same number three times somehow affect the observable behavior of the generator in a way other than preventing three of the same value from coming up in a row?
As a consequence of Rice's Theorem, there is no way to tell which is which.
Proof: Let L be the output of the normal RNG. Let L' be L, but with all sequences of length >= 3 removed. Some TMs recognize L', but some do not. Therefore, by Rice's theorem, determining if a TM accepts L' is not decidable.
As others have noted, you may be able to make an assertion like "It has run for N steps without repeating three times", but you can never make the leap to "it will never repeat a digit three times." More appropriately, there exists at least one machine for which you can't determine whether or not it meets this criterion.
Caveat: if you had a truly random generator (e.g. nuclear decay), it is possible that Rice's theorem would not apply. My intuition is that the theorem still holds for these machines, but I've never heard it discussed.
EDIT: a secondary proof. Suppose P(X) determines with high probability whether or not X accepts L'. We can construct an (infinite number of) programs F like:
F(x): if x(F), then don't accept L'
else, accept L'
P cannot determine the behavior of F(P). Moreover, say P correctly predicts the behavior of G. We can construct:
F'(x): if x(F'), then don't accept L'
else, run G(x)
So for every good case, there must exist at least one bad case.
If S is defined by rejecting from R, then a sequence produced by S will be a subsequence of the sequence produced by R. For example, taking a simple random variable X with equal probability of being 1 or 0, you would have:
R = 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
S = 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1
The only real way to differentiate these two is to look for streaks. If you are generating binary numbers, then streaks are incredibly common (so much so that one can almost always differentiate between a random 100 digit sequence and one that a student writes down trying to be random). If the numbers are taken from [0,1] uniformly, then streaks are far less common.
It's an easy exercise in probability to calculate the chance of three consecutive numbers being equal once you know the distribution, or even better, the expected number of numbers needed until the probability of three consecutive equal numbers is greater than p for your favourite choice of p.
Since you defined that they only differ with respect to that specific property there is no better algorithm to distinguish those two.
If you do triples of randum values of course the generator S will produce all other triples slightly more often than R in order to compensate the missing triples (X,X,X). But to get a significant result you'd need much more data than it will cost you to find any value three consecutive times the first time.
Probably use ENT ( http://fourmilab.ch/random/ )
I'm looking for something that I guess is rather sophisticated and might not exist publicly, but hopefully it does.
I basically have a database with lots of items which all have values (y) that correspond to other values (x). Eg. one of these items might look like:
x | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
y | 12 | 14 | 16 | 8 | 6
This is just a a random example. Now, there are thousands of these items all with their own set of x and y values. The range between one x and the x after that one is not fixed and may differ for every item.
What I'm looking for is a library where I can plugin all these sets of Xs and Ys and tell it to return things like the most common item (sets of x and y that follow a compareable curve / progression), and the ability to check whether a certain set is atleast x% compareable with another set.
With compareable I mean the slope of the curve if you would draw a graph of the data. So, not actaully the static values but rather the detection of events, such as a high increase followed by a slow decrease, etc.
Due to my low amount of experience in mathematics I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for is called, and thus have trouble explaining what I need. Hopefully I gave enough pointers for someone to point me into the right direction.
I'm mostly interested in a library for javascript, but if there is no such thing any library would help, maybe I can try to port what I need.
About Markov Cluster(ing) again, of which I happen to be the author, and your application. You mention you are interested in trend similarity between objects. This is typically computed using Pearson correlation. If you use the mcl implementation from http://micans.org/mcl/, you'll also obtain the program 'mcxarray'. This can be used to compute pearson correlations between e.g. rows in a table. It might be useful to you. It is able to handle missing data - in a simplistic approach, it just computes correlations on those indices for which values are available for both. If you have further questions I am happy to answer them -- with the caveat that I usually like to cc replies to the mcl mailing list so that they are archived and available for future reference.
What you're looking for is an implementation of a Markov clustering. It is often used for finding groups of similar sequences. Porting it to Javascript, well... If you're really serious about this analysis, you drop Javascript as soon as possible and move on to R. Javascript is not meant to do this kind of calculations, and it is far too slow for it. R is a statistical package with much implemented. It is also designed specifically for very speedy matrix calculations, and most of the language is vectorized (meaning you don't need for-loops to apply a function over a vector of values, it happens automatically)
For the markov clustering, check http://www.micans.org/mcl/
An example of an implementation : http://www.orthomcl.org/cgi-bin/OrthoMclWeb.cgi
Now you also need to define a "distance" between your sets. As you are interested in the events and not the values, you could give every item an extra attribute being a vector with the differences y[i] - y[i-1] (in R : diff(y) ). The distance between two items can then be calculated as the sum of squared differences between y1[i] and y2[i].
This allows you to construct a distance matrix of your items, and on that one you can call the mcl algorithm. Unless you work on linux, you'll have to port that one.
What you're wanting to do is ANOVA, or ANalysis Of VAriance. If you run the numbers through an ANOVA test, it'll give you information about the dataset that will help you compare one to another. I was unable to locate a Javascript library that would perform ANOVA, but there are plenty of programs that are capable of it. Excel can perform ANOVA from a plugin. R is a stats package that is free and can also perform ANOVA.
Hope this helps.
Something simple is (assuming all the graphs have 5 points, and x = 1,2,3,4,5 always)
Take u1 = the first point of y, ie. y1
Take u2 = y2 - y1
...
Take u5 = y5 - y4
Now consider the vector u as a point in 5-dimensional space. You can use simple clustering algorithms, like k-means.
EDIT: You should not aim for something too complicated as long as you go with javascript. If you want to go with Java, I can suggest something based on PCA (requiring the use of singular value decomposition, which is too complicated to be implemented efficiently in JS).
Basically, it goes like this: Take as previously a (possibly large) linear representation of data, perhaps differences of components of x, of y, absolute values. For instance you could take
u = (x1, x2 - x1, ..., x5 - x4, y1, y2 - y1, ..., y5 - y4)
You compute the vector u for each sample. Call ui the vector u for the ith sample. Now, form the matrix
M_{ij} = dot product of ui and uj
and compute its SVD. Now, the N most significant singular values (ie. those above some "similarity threshold") give you N clusters.
The corresponding columns of the matrix U in the SVD give you an orthonormal family B_k, k = 1..N. The squared ith component of B_k gives you the probability that the ith sample belongs to cluster K.
If it is ok to use java you really should have a look at Weka. It is possible to access all features via java code. Maybe you find a markov clustering, but if not, they hava a lot other clustering algorithem and its really easy to use.