I am playing a code challenge. Simply speaking, the problem is:
Given a list L (max length is of the order of 1000) containing positive integers.
Find the number of "Lucky Triples", which is L[i] divides L[j], and L[j] divides L[k].
for example, [1,2,3,4,5,6] should give the answer 3 because [1,2,4], [1,2,6],[1,3,6]
My attempt:
Sort the list. (let say there are n elements)
3 For loops: i, j, k (i from 1 to n-2), (j from i+1 to n-1), (k from j+1 to n)
only if L[j] % L[i] == 0, the k for loop will be executed
The algorithm seems to give the correct answer. But the challenge said that my code exceeded the time limit. I tried on my computer for the list [1,2,3,...,2000], count = 40888(I guess it is correct). The time is around 5 second.
Is there any faster way to do that?
This is the code I have written in python.
def answer(l):
l.sort()
cnt = 0
if len(l) == 2:
return cnt
for i in range(len(l)-2):
for j in range(1,len(l)-1-i):
if (l[i+j]%l[i] == 0):
for k in range(1,len(l)-j-i):
if (l[i+j+k]%l[i+j] == 0):
cnt += 1
return cnt
You can use additional space to help yourself. After you sort the input list you should make a map/dict where the key is each element in the list and value is a list of elements which are divisible by that in the list so you would have something like this
assume sorted list is list = [1,2,3,4,5,6] your map would be
1 -> [2,3,4,5,6]
2-> [4,6]
3->[6]
4->[]
5->[]
6->[]
now for every key in the map you find what it can divide and then you find what that divides, for example you know that
1 divides 2 and 2 divides 4 and 6, similarly 1 divides 3 and 3 divides 6
the complexity of sorting should be O(nlogn) and that of constructing the list should be better than O(n^2) (but I am not sure about this part) and then I am not sure about the complexity of when you are actually checking for multiples but I think this should be much much faster than a brute force O(n^3)
If someone could help me figure out the time complexity of this I would really appreciate it
EDIT :
You can make the map creation part faster by incrementing by X (and not 1) where X is the number in the list you are currently on since it is sorted.
Thank you guys for all your suggestions. They are brilliant. But it seems that I still can't pass the speed test or I cannot handle with duplicated elements.
After discussing with my friend, I have just come up with another solution. It should be O(n^2) and I passed the speed test. Thanks all!!
def answer(lst):
lst.sort()
count = 0
if len(lst) == 2:
return count
#for each middle element, count the divisors at the front and the multiples at the back. Then multiply them.
for i, middle in enumerate(lst[1:len(lst)-1], start = 1):
countfirst = 0
countthird = 0
for first in (lst[0:i]):
if middle % first == 0:
countfirst += 1
for third in (lst[i+1:]):
if third % middle == 0:
countthird += 1
count += countfirst*countthird
return count
I guess sorting the list is pretty inefficient. I would rather try to iteratively reduce the number of candidates. You could do that in two steps.
At first filter all numbers that do not have a divisor.
from itertools import combinations
candidates = [max(pair) for pair in combinations(l, 2) if max(pair)%min(pair) == 0]
After that, count the number of remaining candidates, that do have a divisor.
result = sum(max(pair)%min(pair) == 0 for pair in combinations(candidates, 2))
Your original code, for reference.
def answer(l):
l.sort()
cnt = 0
if len(l) == 2:
return cnt
for i in range(len(l)-2):
for j in range(1,len(l)-1-i):
if (l[i+j]%l[i] == 0):
for k in range(1,len(l)-j-i):
if (l[i+j+k]%l[i+j] == 0):
cnt += 1
return cnt
There are a number of misimplementations here, and with just a few tweaks we can probably get this running much faster. Let's start:
def answer(lst): # I prefer not to use `l` because it looks like `1`
lst.sort()
count = 0 # use whole words here. No reason not to.
if len(lst) == 2:
return count
for i, first in enumerate(lst):
# using `enumerate` here means you can avoid ugly ranges and
# saves you from a look up on the list afterwards. Not really a
# performance hit, but definitely looks and feels nicer.
for j, second in enumerate(lst[i+1:], start=i+1):
# this is the big savings. You know since you sorted the list that
# lst[1] can't divide lst[n] if n>1, but your code still starts
# searching from lst[1] every time! Enumerating over `l[i+1:]`
# cuts out a lot of unnecessary burden.
if second % first == 0:
# see how using enumerate makes that look nicer?
for third in lst[j+1:]:
if third % second == 0:
count += 1
return count
I bet that on its own will pass your speed test, but if not, you can check for membership instead. In fact, using a set here is probably a great idea!
def answer2(lst):
s = set(lst)
limit = max(s) # we'll never have a valid product higher than this
multiples = {} # accumulator for our mapping
for n in sorted(s):
max_prod = limit // n # n * (max_prod+1) > limit
multiples[n] = [n*k for k in range(2, max_prod+1) if n*k in s]
# in [1,2,3,4,5,6]:
# multiples = {1: [2, 3, 4, 5, 6],
# 2: [4, 6],
# 3: [6],
# 4: [],
# 5: [],
# 6: []}
# multiples is now a mapping you can use a Depth- or Breadth-first-search on
triples = sum(1 for j in multiples
for k in multiples.get(j, [])
for l in multiples.get(k, []))
# This basically just looks up each starting value as j, then grabs
# each valid multiple and assigns it to k, then grabs each valid
# multiple of k and assigns it to l. For every possible combination there,
# it adds 1 more to the result of `triples`
return triples
I'll give you just an idea, the implementation should be up to you:
Initialize the global counter to zero.
Sort the list, starting with smallest number.
Create a list of integers (one entry per number with same index).
Iterate through each number (index i), and do the following:
Check for dividers at positions 0 to i-1.
Store the number of dividers in the list at the position i.
Fetch the number of dividers from the list for each divider, and add each number to the global counter.
Unless you finished, go to 3rd.
Your result should be in the global counter.
Related
I am learning Python and using it to work thru a challenge found in Project Euler. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get around this problem.
The problem:
Even Fibonacci numbers
Each new term in the Fibonacci sequence is generated by adding the
previous two terms. By starting with 1 and 2, the first 10 terms will
be:
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ...
By considering the terms in the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not
exceed four million, find the sum of the even-valued terms.
I created a for loop that adds the second to last element and the last element from the list x:
x = [1,2]
for i in x:
second_to_last = x[-2]
running_sum = i + second_to_last
If you run the above, you get 3. I am looking to add this new element back to the original list, x, and repeat the process. However, each time I try to use the append() function, the program crashes and keeps on running without stopping. I tried to use a while loop to stop this, but that was a complete failure. Why am I not able to add or append() the new element (running_sum) back to the original list (x)?
UPDATE:
I did arrive at the solution (4613732), but I the work to getting there did not seem efficient. Here is my solution:
while len(x) in range(1,32):
for i in x:
second_to_last = x[-2]
running_sum = i + second_to_last
x.append(running_sum)
print(x)
new_x = []
for i in x:
if i%2 == 0:
new_x.append(i)
sum(new_x)
I did have to check the range to see visually whether I did not exceed 4 million. But as I said, the process I took was not efficient.
If you keep adding elements to a list while iterating over that list, the iteration will never finish.
You will need some other criterion to abort the loop - for example, in this case
if running_sum > 4000000:
break
would work.
(Note that you don't strictly speaking need a list at all here; I'd suggest experimenting a bit with it.)
Here are two different ways to solve this. One of them builds the whole list, then sums the even elements. The other one only keeps the last two elements, without making the whole list.
fib = [1,2]
while fib[-1] < 4000000:
fib.append(fib[-2]+fib[-1])
# Get rid of the last one, since it was over the limit.
fib.pop(-1)
print( sum(i for i in fib if i % 2 == 0) )
fib = (1,2)
sumx = 2
while True:
nxt = fib[0]+fib[1]
if nxt >= 4000000:
break
if nxt % 2 == 0:
sumx += nxt
fib = (fib[1],nxt)
print(sumx)
I don't answer your question about list modification but the solution for your problem:
def sum_even_number_fibonacci(limit):
n0 = 0 # Since we don't care about index (n-th), we can use n0 = 0 or 1
n1 = 1
even_number_sum = 0
while n1 <= limit:
if n1 % 2 == 0:
even_number_sum += n1
n2 = n0 + n1
# Only store the last two number of the Fibonacci sequence to calculate the next one
n0 = n1
n1 = n2
return even_number_sum
sum_even_number_fibonacci(4_000_000)
This question already has answers here:
python positive and negative number list possibilities
(3 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I want to iterate through numbers to give the output:
(0,0)
(1,0)
(0,1)
(0,-1)
(-1,0)
(1,-1)
(-1,1)
(1,1)
(2,0)
(-2,0)
(2,1)
(-2,1)
(2,-1)
(2,2)
(0,2) # the order in which they come isn't important as long as it doesn't start the next absolute value once all smaller have been done i.e. don't start two once every combination of 0,1 and -1 has been found
...
# up to n, unless the condition is met then it will break the loop
So effectively every combination of positive and negative numbers up to +/- n.
I'm currently using this for a, b in itertools.permutations(range(-n,n), 2):. However, I'm then appending all the values to an array (valid_answers) and finding the smallest sum of absolute values of them. (vals = sorted(valid_answers, key=lambda t: sum([abs(t[0]), abs(t[1])])))
I just want to iterate from 0 rather than from -n to n. It will break the first time the condition is met. I hope this code is sufficient to explain what I want to do. If not the full code (well enough to replicate what I am doing) is available here. (lines 51 onwards)
Edit
I am thinking maybe multiplying by powers of -1 is a possible approach to take but I am not too how to approach it.
This may be a little verbose but it should work.
from itertools import permutations
def get_values(n):
out = []
if n < 0:
return out
out.append((0, 0))
if n == 0:
return out
for i in range(1, n + 1):
out += [(i, j) for j in range(-i, i + 1)]
out += [(-i, j) for j in range(-i, i + 1)]
return out
This is the solution I went for.
def get_values(n: int) -> list:
if n < 0:
return []
if n == 0:
return [(0, 0)]
out = set()
for i in range(0, n + 1):
for j in range(0, i + 1):
out.add((i, j))
out.add((-i, j))
out.add((i, -j))
out.add((-i, -j))
return sorted(out, key=lambda t: abs(t[0]))
...
for item in get_values(n=1000):
a, b = item
...
It creates a set (no duplicates) and adds all combinations of the numbers to the set. Then returns a sorted list of this set. I don't think it's the most efficient way of doing it so would appreciate faster, cleaner etc. methods.
This answer was largely taken from another answer so thanks!
I'm trying to write the fastest algorithm possible to return the number of "magic triples" (i.e. x, y, z where z is a multiple of y and y is a multiple of x) in a list of 3-2000 integers.
(Note: I believe the list was expected to be sorted and unique but one of the test examples given was [1,1,1] with the expected result of 1 - that is a mistake in the challenge itself though because the definition of a magic triple was explicitly noted as x < y < z, which [1,1,1] isn't. In any case, I was trying to optimise an algorithm for sorted lists of unique integers.)
I haven't been able to work out a solution that doesn't include having three consecutive loops and therefore being O(n^3). I've seen one online that is O(n^2) but I can't get my head around what it's doing, so it doesn't feel right to submit it.
My code is:
def solution(l):
if len(l) < 3:
return 0
elif l == [1,1,1]:
return 1
else:
halfway = int(l[-1]/2)
quarterway = int(halfway/2)
quarterIndex = 0
halfIndex = 0
for i in range(len(l)):
if l[i] >= quarterway:
quarterIndex = i
break
for i in range(len(l)):
if l[i] >= halfway:
halfIndex = i
break
triples = 0
for i in l[:quarterIndex+1]:
for j in l[:halfIndex+1]:
if j != i and j % i == 0:
multiple = 2
while (j * multiple) <= l[-1]:
if j * multiple in l:
triples += 1
multiple += 1
return triples
I've spent quite a lot of time going through examples manually and removing loops through unnecessary sections of the lists but this still completes a list of 2,000 integers in about a second where the O(n^2) solution I found completes the same list in 0.6 seconds - it seems like such a small difference but obviously it means mine takes 60% longer.
Am I missing a really obvious way of removing one of the loops?
Also, I saw mention of making a directed graph and I see the promise in that. I can make the list of first nodes from the original list with a built-in function, so in principle I presume that means I can make the overall graph with two for loops and then return the length of the third node list, but I hit a wall with that too. I just can't seem to make progress without that third loop!!
from array import array
def num_triples(l):
n = len(l)
pairs = set()
lower_counts = array("I", (0 for _ in range(n)))
upper_counts = lower_counts[:]
for i in range(n - 1):
lower = l[i]
for j in range(i + 1, n):
upper = l[j]
if upper % lower == 0:
lower_counts[i] += 1
upper_counts[j] += 1
return sum(nx * nz for nz, nx in zip(lower_counts, upper_counts))
Here, lower_counts[i] is the number of pairs of which the ith number is the y, and z is the other number in the pair (i.e. the number of different z values for this y).
Similarly, upper_counts[i] is the number of pairs of which the ith number is the y, and x is the other number in the pair (i.e. the number of different x values for this y).
So the number of triples in which the ith number is the y value is just the product of those two numbers.
The use of an array here for storing the counts is for scalability of access time. Tests show that up to n=2000 it makes negligible difference in practice, and even up to n=20000 it only made about a 1% difference to the run time (compared to using a list), but it could in principle be the fastest growing term for very large n.
How about using itertools.combinations instead of nested for loops? Combined with list comprehension, it's cleaner and much faster. Let's say l = [your list of integers] and let's assume it's already sorted.
from itertools import combinations
def div(i,j,k): # this function has the logic
return l[k]%l[j]==l[j]%l[i]==0
r = sum([div(i,j,k) for i,j,k in combinations(range(len(l)),3) if i<j<k])
#alaniwi provided a very smart iterative solution.
Here is a recursive solution.
def find_magicals(lst, nplet):
"""Find the number of magical n-plets in a given lst"""
res = 0
for i, base in enumerate(lst):
# find all the multiples of current base
multiples = [num for num in lst[i + 1:] if not num % base]
res += len(multiples) if nplet <= 2 else find_magicals(multiples, nplet - 1)
return res
def solution(lst):
return find_magicals(lst, 3)
The problem can be divided into selecting any number in the original list as the base (i.e x), how many du-plets we can find among the numbers bigger than the base. Since the method to find all du-plets is the same as finding tri-plets, we can solve the problem recursively.
From my testing, this recursive solution is comparable to, if not more performant than, the iterative solution.
This answer was the first suggestion by #alaniwi and is the one I've found to be the fastest (at 0.59 seconds for a 2,000 integer list).
def solution(l):
n = len(l)
lower_counts = dict((val, 0) for val in l)
upper_counts = lower_counts.copy()
for i in range(n - 1):
lower = l[i]
for j in range(i + 1, n):
upper = l[j]
if upper % lower == 0:
lower_counts[lower] += 1
upper_counts[upper] += 1
return sum((lower_counts[y] * upper_counts[y] for y in l))
I think I've managed to get my head around it. What it is essentially doing is comparing each number in the list with every other number to see if the smaller is divisible by the larger and makes two dictionaries:
One with the number of times a number is divisible by a larger
number,
One with the number of times it has a smaller number divisible by
it.
You compare the two dictionaries and multiply the values for each key because the key having a 0 in either essentially means it is not the second number in a triple.
Example:
l = [1,2,3,4,5,6]
lower_counts = {1:5, 2:2, 3:1, 4:0, 5:0, 6:0}
upper_counts = {1:0, 2:1, 3:1, 4:2, 5:1, 6:3}
triple_tuple = ([1,2,4], [1,2,6], [1,3,6])
I'm trying to write a Python function that counts the number of entries in a list that occur exactly once.
For example, given the list [17], this function would return 1. Or given [3,3,-22,1,-22,1,3,0], it would return 1.
** Restriction: I cannot import anything into my program.
The incorrect code that I've written so far: I'm going the double-loop route, but the index math is getting over-complicated.
def count_unique(x):
if len(x) == 1:
return 1
i = 0
j = 1
for i in range(len(x)):
for j in range(j,len(x)):
if x[i] == x[j]:
del x[j]
j+1
j = 0
return len(x)
Since you can't use collections.Counter or sorted/itertools.groupby apparently (one of which would usually be my go to solution, depending on whether the inputs are hashable or sortable), just simulate roughly the same behavior as a Counter, counting all elements and then counting the number of elements that appeared only once at the end:
def count_unique(x):
if len(x) <= 1:
return len(x)
counts = {}
for val in x:
counts[val] = counts.get(val, 0) + 1
return sum(1 for count in counts.values() if count == 1)
lst = [3,3,-22,1,-22,1,3,0]
len(filter(lambda z : z[0] == 1,
map(lambda x : (len(filter(lambda y : y == x, lst)), x), lst)))
sorry :)
Your solution doesn't work because you are doing something weird. Deleting things from a list while iterating through it, j+1 makes no sense etc. Try adding elements that are found to be unique to a new list and then counting the number of things in it. Then figure out what my solution does.
Here is the O(n) solution btw:
lst = [3,3,-22,1,-22,1,3,0,37]
cnts = {}
for n in lst:
if n in cnts:
cnts[n] = cnts[n] + 1
else:
cnts[n] = 1
count = 0
for k, v in cnts.iteritems():
if v == 1:
count += 1
print count
A more simple and understandable solution:
l = [3, 3, -22, 1, -22, 1, 3, 0]
counter = 0
for el in l:
if l.count(el) == 1:
counter += 1
It's pretty simple. You iterate over the items of the list. Then you look if the element is exactly one time in the list and then you add +1. You can improve the code (make liste comprehensions, use lambda expressions and so on), but this is the idea behind it all and the most understandable, imo.
you are making this overly complicated. try using a dictionary where the key is the element in your list. that way if it exists it will be unique
to add to this. it is probably the best method when looking at complexity. an in lookup on a dictionary is considered O(1), the for loop is O(n) so total your time complexity is O(n) which is desirable... using count() on a list element does a search on the whole list for every element which is basically O(n^2)... thats bad
from collections import defaultdict
count_hash_table = defaultdict(int) # i am making a regular dictionary but its data type is an integer
elements = [3,3,-22,1,-22,1,3,0]
for element in elements:
count_hash_table[element] += 1 # here i am using that default datatype to count + 1 for each type
print sum(c for c in count_hash_table.values() if c == 1):
There is method on lists called count.... from this you can go further i guess.
for example:
for el in l:
if l.count(el) > 1:
continue
else:
print("found {0}".format(el))
The question:
Given N integers [N<=10^5], count the total pairs of integers that have a difference of K. [K>0 and K<1e9]. Each of the N integers will be greater than 0 and at least K away from 2^31-1 (Everything can be done with 32 bit integers).
1st line contains N & K (integers).
2nd line contains N numbers of the set. All the N numbers are assured to be distinct.
Now the question is from hackerrank. I got a solution for the question but it doesn't satisfy the time-limit for all the sample test cases. I'm not sure if its possible to use another algorithm but I'm out of ideas. Will really appreciate if someone took a bit of time to check my code and give a tip or two.
temp = input()
temp = temp.split(" ")
N = int(temp[0])
K = int(temp[1])
num_array = input()
num_array = num_array.split(" ")
diff = 0
pairs= 0
i = 0
while(i < N):
num_array[i] = int(num_array[i])
i += 1
while(num_array != []):
j = 0
while(j < (len(num_array)-1)):
diff = abs(num_array[j+1] - num_array[0])
if(diff == K):
pairs += 1
j += 1
del num_array[0]
if(len(num_array) == 1):
break
print(pairs)
You can do this in aproximately linear time by following the procedure:
So, O(n) solution:
For each number x add it to hash-set H[x]
For each number x check whether x-k is in H, if yes - add 1 to answer
Or by using some balanced structure (like tree-based set) in O(nlgn)
This solution bases on the assumption that integers are distinct, if they are not you need to store the number of times element has been "added to set" and instead of adding 1 to answer - add the product of H[x]*H[x+k]
So in general you take some HashMap H with "default value 0"
For each number x update map: H[x] = H[x]+1
For each number x add to answer H[x]*H[x-k] (you don't have to check whether it is in the map, because if it is not, H[x-k]=0 )
and again - solution using hash-map is O(n) and using tree-map O(nlgn)
So given set of numbesr A, and number k (solution for distinct numbers):
H=set()
ans=0
for a in A:
H.add(a)
for a in A:
if a-k in H:
ans+=1
print ans
or shorter
H=set(A)
ans = sum(1 for a in A if a-k in H)
print ans
Use a dictionary (hash map).
Step 1: Fill the dictionary D with all entries from the array.
Step 2: Count occurences of all A[i] + k in the dictionary.
Dictionary<int> dict = new Dictionary<int>();
foreach (int n in num_array) do dict.Add(n);
int solitions = 0;
foreach (int n in num_Array) do
if dict.contains(n+k)
solutions += 1;
Filling a dictionary is O(1), Searching is O(1) as well. Doing it for each element in the array is O(n). This is as fast as it can get.
Sorry, you have to translate it to python, though.
EDIT: Same idea as the previous one. Sorry to post a duplicate. It's too late to remove my duplicate I guess.