Develop Reference

Creating an s-curve based on data points

I have a series of data points which form a curve I do not have an equation for, and for which i have not been able to satisfyingly calculate an equation with either libreoffice or the online curve fitting tools in the first 2 pages of google results.
I would like the equation for the curve and ideally a python implementation of calculating y values for a given x value along that curve in case there are unexpected hoops to jump through. Failing that I would like any more elegant python solution than a list of elif statements incrementing y if x is high enough for it to increase by a whole number, which is the ugly solution of last resort - my immediate plans do not require decimal precision.
The curve crosses the zero line at 10, and every whole number incrementation of y requires x to be incremented by one more whole number than the previous, so y1 is reached at x11, y2 at x13, y3 at x16 etc, with the curve bending in the other direction in the negatives such that y-1 is at x9, y-2 is at x7 etc. I suspect i am missing something obvious as far as finding the curve equation when i already have this knowledge.
In addition to trying to use libreoffice calc and several online curve-fitting websites to no avail, i have tried slicing the s-curve (I have given up on searching the term sigmoid function as all my results are either related to neural nets or expect my y values to never exceed +-1) into two logarythmic curves, which almost works - 5 *(np.log(x) - 11) gets something frustratingly close to the top half of the curve, but which i ultimately haven't been able to use - in addition to crossing the number line at 9 it produced some odd behaviour when I returned round() rounded y values directly, displaying results in the negative 40s when returned directly, but seeming to work fine when those numbers are fed into other calculations.
If somebody can give me two working logarythms that round to the right numbers for x values between 0 and 50 that is good enough for this project.
Thank you for your time and patience.
-EDIT-
these are triangular numbers apparently, x-10 is equal to the number of dots in a triangle with y dots on each side, what I need is the inverse of the triangular number formula. Thank you to everyone who commented.

As mentioned in my edit, the y i am trying to find is the triangular root of x. This solution:
def get_triangle_root(x: int) -> int:
current_value = x - 10
negative = False
if current_value < 0:
current_value = current_value * -1
negative = True
current_value = np.sqrt(1 + (current_value * 8))
current_value = (current_value - 1)/2
if negative == True:
current_value = current_value * -1
current_value = int(current_value)
return current_value
seems to work fine for now. Curiously, when I calculate (-1+(sqrt(1+(8*x)))/2) using libreoffice or google, rather than getting the same results this python script gives me, i get results 0.5 lower than the actual triangle root. Unimportant at this time, but I am curious as to what would cause it.
At any rate, thank you to everyone who lent their time to me. I apologise to anyone looking at this question who was looking for a universal solution for creating S-curves rather than just one that works for my specific task, but feel it is best to attach an answer to this question so as not to prevail on more people's time.
-EDIT- changed python script to handle negative triangular numbers as well, something i had overlooked in excitement.

What you're looking for are a class of functions called "Sigmoid functions". They have a characteristic S-shape. Go to Wolfram and play around with some common Sigmoid funcs, remembering that the "a" in a function, f(x-a), shifts the entire curve left or right, and appending a value "b" to the function, f(x-a) + b will shift the curve up and down. Using a coefficient of "c", f(c*x - a) + b here acts as a scalar. That should get you where you want to be in short time.
Example: (1/(1 + C*exp(-(x + A)))) + B

Numerical solution of exponential equation using Python or other software

I want to find numerical solutions to the following exponential equation where a,b,c,d are constants and I want to solve for r, which is not equal to 1.
a^r + b^r = c^r + d^r (Equation 1)
I define a function in order to use Scipy.optimize.fsolve:
from scipy.optimize import fsolve
def func(r,a,b,c,d):
if r==1:
return 10**5
else:
return ( a**(1-r) + b**(1-r) ) - ( c**(1-r) + d**(1-r) )
fsolve(funcp,0.1, args=(5,5,4,7))
However, the fsolve always returns 1 as the solution, which is not what I want. Can someone help me with this issue? Or in general, tell me how to solve (Equation 1). I used an online numerical solver long time ago, but I cannot find it anymore. That's why I am trying to figure it out using Python.

You need to apply some mathematical reasoning when choosing the initial guess. Consider your problem f(r) = (51-r + 51-r) − (41-r + 71-r)
When r ≤ 1, f(r) is always negative and decreasing (since 71-r is growing much faster than other terms). Therefore, all root-finding algorithms will be pushed to right towards 1 until reaching this local solution.
You need to pick a point far away from 1 on the right to find the nontrivial solution:
>>> scipy.optimize.fsolve(lambda r: 5**(1-r)+5**(1-r)-4**(1-r)-7**(1-r), 2.0)
array([ 2.48866034])
Simply setting f(1) = 105 is not going to have any effect, as the root-finding algorithm won't check f(1) until the very last step(note).
If you wish to apply a penalty, the penalty must be applied to a range of value around 1. One way to do so, without affecting the position of other roots, is to divide the whole function by (r − 1):
>>> scipy.optimize.fsolve(lambda r: (5**(1-r)+5**(1-r)-4**(1-r)-7**(1-r)) / (r-1), 0.1)
array([ 2.48866034])
(note): they may climb like f(0.1) → f(0.4) → f(0.7) → f(0.86) → f(0.96) → f(0.997) → … and stop as soon as |f(x)| < 10-5, so your f(1) is never evaluated

First of your code seems to uses a different equation than your question: 1-r instead of just r.
Valid answers to the equation is 1 and 2.4886 approximately as can be seen here. With the second argument of fsolve you specify a starting estimate. I think due to 0.1 being close to 1 you get that result. Using the 2.1 as starting estimate I get the other answer 2.4886.
from scipy.optimize import fsolve
def func(r,a,b,c,d):
if r==1:
return 10**5
else:
return ( a**(1-r) + b**(1-r) ) - ( c**(1-r) + d**(1-r) )
print(fsolve(func, 2.1, args=(5,5,4,7)))
Chosing a starting estimate is tricky as many give the following error: ValueError: Integers to negative integer powers are not allowed.

Reversing pow function - finding the power [duplicate]

Given positive integers b, c, m where (b < m) is True it is to find a positive integer e such that
(b**e % m == c) is True
where ** is exponentiation (e.g. in Ruby, Python or ^ in some other languages) and % is modulo operation. What is the most effective algorithm (with the lowest big-O complexity) to solve it?
Example:
Given b=5; c=8; m=13 this algorithm must find e=7 because 5**7%13 = 8

From the % operator I'm assuming that you are working with integers.
You are trying to solve the Discrete Logarithm problem. A reasonable algorithm is Baby step, giant step, although there are many others, none of which are particularly fast.
The difficulty of finding a fast solution to the discrete logarithm problem is a fundamental part of some popular cryptographic algorithms, so if you find a better solution than any of those on Wikipedia please let me know!

This isn't a simple problem at all. It is called calculating the discrete logarithm and it is the inverse operation to a modular exponentation.
There is no efficient algorithm known. That is, if N denotes the number of bits in m, all known algorithms run in O(2^(N^C)) where C>0.

Python 3 Solution:
Thankfully, SymPy has implemented this for you!
SymPy is a Python library for symbolic mathematics. It aims to become a full-featured computer algebra system (CAS) while keeping the code as simple as possible in order to be comprehensible and easily extensible. SymPy is written entirely in Python.
This is the documentation on the discrete_log function. Use this to import it:
from sympy.ntheory import discrete_log
Their example computes \log_7(15) (mod 41):
>>> discrete_log(41, 15, 7)
3
Because of the (state-of-the-art, mind you) algorithms it employs to solve it, you'll get O(\sqrt{n}) on most inputs you try. It's considerably faster when your prime modulus has the property where p - 1 factors into a lot of small primes.
Consider a prime on the order of 100 bits: (~ 2^{100}). With \sqrt{n} complexity, that's still 2^{50} iterations. That being said, don't reinvent the wheel. This does a pretty good job. I might also add that it was almost 4x times more memory efficient than Mathematica's MultiplicativeOrder function when I ran with large-ish inputs (44 MiB vs. 173 MiB).

Since a duplicate of this question was asked under the Python tag, here is a Python implementation of baby step, giant step, which, as #MarkBeyers points out, is a reasonable approach (as long as the modulus isn't too large):
def baby_steps_giant_steps(a,b,p,N = None):
if not N: N = 1 + int(math.sqrt(p))
#initialize baby_steps table
baby_steps = {}
baby_step = 1
for r in range(N+1):
baby_steps[baby_step] = r
baby_step = baby_step * a % p
#now take the giant steps
giant_stride = pow(a,(p-2)*N,p)
giant_step = b
for q in range(N+1):
if giant_step in baby_steps:
return q*N + baby_steps[giant_step]
else:
giant_step = giant_step * giant_stride % p
return "No Match"
In the above implementation, an explicit N can be passed to fish for a small exponent even if p is cryptographically large. It will find the exponent as long as the exponent is smaller than N**2. When N is omitted, the exponent will always be found, but not necessarily in your lifetime or with your machine's memory if p is too large.
For example, if
p = 70606432933607
a = 100001
b = 54696545758787
then 'pow(a,b,p)' evaluates to 67385023448517
and
>>> baby_steps_giant_steps(a,67385023448517,p)
54696545758787
This took about 5 seconds on my machine. For the exponent and the modulus of those sizes, I estimate (based on timing experiments) that brute force would have taken several months.

Discrete logarithm is a hard problem
Computing discrete logarithms is believed to be difficult. No
efficient general method for computing discrete logarithms on
conventional computers is known.
I will add here a simple bruteforce algorithm which tries every possible value from 1 to m and outputs a solution if it was found. Note that there may be more than one solution to the problem or zero solutions at all. This algorithm will return you the smallest possible value or -1 if it does not exist.
def bruteLog(b, c, m):
s = 1
for i in xrange(m):
s = (s * b) % m
if s == c:
return i + 1
return -1
print bruteLog(5, 8, 13)
and here you can see that 3 is in fact the solution:
print 5**3 % 13
There is a better algorithm, but because it is often asked to be implemented in programming competitions, I will just give you a link to explanation.

as said the general problem is hard. however a prcatical way to find e if and only if you know e is going to be small (like in your example) would be just to try each e from 1.
btw e==3 is the first solution to your example, and you can obviously find that in 3 steps, compare to solving the non discrete version, and naively looking for integer solutions i.e.
e = log(c + n*m)/log(b) where n is a non-negative integer
which finds e==3 in 9 steps

Solving recursive sequence

Lately I've been solving some challenges from Google Foobar for fun, and now I've been stuck in one of them for more than 4 days. It is about a recursive function defined as follows:
R(0) = 1
R(1) = 1
R(2) = 2
R(2n) = R(n) + R(n + 1) + n (for n > 1)
R(2n + 1) = R(n - 1) + R(n) + 1 (for n >= 1)
The challenge is writing a function answer(str_S) where str_S is a base-10 string representation of an integer S, which returns the largest n such that R(n) = S. If there is no such n, return "None". Also, S will be a positive integer no greater than 10^25.
I have investigated a lot about recursive functions and about solving recurrence relations, but with no luck. I outputted the first 500 numbers and I found no relation with each one whatsoever. I used the following code, which uses recursion, so it gets really slow when numbers start getting big.
def getNumberOfZombits(time):
if time == 0 or time == 1:
return 1
elif time == 2:
return 2
else:
if time % 2 == 0:
newTime = time/2
return getNumberOfZombits(newTime) + getNumberOfZombits(newTime+1) + newTime
else:
newTime = time/2 # integer, so rounds down
return getNumberOfZombits(newTime-1) + getNumberOfZombits(newTime) + 1
The challenge also included some test cases so, here they are:
Test cases
==========
Inputs:
(string) str_S = "7"
Output:
(string) "4"
Inputs:
(string) str_S = "100"
Output:
(string) "None"
I don't know if I need to solve the recurrence relation to anything simpler, but as there is one for even and one for odd numbers, I find it really hard to do (I haven't learned about it in school yet, so everything I know about this subject is from internet articles).
So, any help at all guiding me to finish this challenge will be welcome :)

Instead of trying to simplify this function mathematically, I simplified the algorithm in Python. As suggested by #LambdaFairy, I implemented memoization in the getNumberOfZombits(time) function. This optimization sped up the function a lot.
Then, I passed to the next step, of trying to see what was the input to that number of rabbits. I had analyzed the function before, by watching its plot, and I knew the even numbers got higher outputs first and only after some time the odd numbers got to the same level. As we want the highest input for that output, I first needed to search in the even numbers and then in the odd numbers.
As you can see, the odd numbers take always more time than the even to reach the same output.
The problem is that we could not search for the numbers increasing 1 each time (it was too slow). What I did to solve that was to implement a binary search-like algorithm. First, I would search the even numbers (with the binary search like algorithm) until I found one answer or I had no more numbers to search. Then, I did the same to the odd numbers (again, with the binary search like algorithm) and if an answer was found, I replaced whatever I had before with it (as it was necessarily bigger than the previous answer).
I have the source code I used to solve this, so if anyone needs it I don't mind sharing it :)

The key to solving this puzzle was using a binary search.
As you can see from the sequence generators, they rely on a roughly n/2 recursion, so calculating R(N) takes about 2*log2(N) recursive calls; and of course you need to do it for both the odd and the even.
Thats not too bad, but you need to figure out where to search for the N which will give you the input. To do this, I first implemented a search for upper and lower bounds for N. I walked up N by powers of 2, until I had N and 2N that formed the lower and upper bounds respectively for each sequence (odd and even).
With these bounds, I could then do a binary search between them to quickly find the value of N, or its non-existence.

How do I get the Math equation of Python Algorithm?

ok so I am feeling a little stupid for not knowing this, but a coworker asked so I am asking here: I have written a python algorithm that solves his problem. given x > 0 add all numbers together from 1 to x.
def intsum(x):
if x > 0:
return x + intsum(x - 1)
else:
return 0
intsum(10)
55
first what is this type of equation is this and what is the correct way to get this answer as it is clearly easier using some other method?

This is recursion, though for some reason you're labeling it like it's factorial.
In any case, the sum from 1 to n is also simply:
n * ( n + 1 ) / 2
(You can special case it for negative values if you like.)

Transforming recursively-defined sequences of integers into ones that can be expressed in a closed form is a fascinating part of discrete mathematics -- I heartily recommend Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik (see. e.g. the wikipedia entry about it).
However, the specific sequence you show, fac(x) = fac(x - 1) + x, according to a famous anecdote, was solved by Gauss when he was a child in first grade -- the teacher had given the pupils the taksk of summing numbers from 1 to 100 to keep them quet for a while, but two minutes later there was young Gauss with the answer, 5050, and the explanation: "I noticed that I can sum the first, 1, and the last, 100, that's 101; and the second, 2, and the next-to-last, 99, and that's again 101; and clearly that repeats 50 times, so, 50 times 101, 5050". Not rigorous as proofs go, but quite correct and appropriate for a 6-years-old;-).
In the same way (plus really elementary algebra) you can see that the general case is, as many have already said, (N * (N+1)) / 2 (the product is always even, since one of the numbers must be odd and one even; so the division by two will always produce an integer, as desired, with no remainder).

Here is how to prove the closed form for an arithmetic progression
S = 1 + 2 + ... + (n-1) + n
S = n + (n-1) + ... + 2 + 1
2S = (n+1) + (n+1) + ... + (n+1) + (n+1)
^ you'll note that there are n terms there.
2S = n(n+1)
S = n(n+1)/2

I'm not allowed to comment yet so I'll just add that you'll want to be careful in using range() as it's 0 base. You'll need to use range(n+1) to get the desired effect.
Sorry for the duplication...
sum(range(10)) != 55
sum(range(11)) == 55

OP has asked, in a comment, for a link to the story about Gauss as a schoolchild.
He may want to check out this fascinating article by Brian Hayes. It not only rather convincingly suggests that the Gauss story may be a modern fabrication, but outlines how it would be rather difficult not to see the patterns involved in summing the numbers from 1 to 100. That in fact the only way to miss these patterns would be to solve the problem by writing a program.
The article also talks about different ways to sum arithmetic progressions, which is at the heart of OP's question. There is also an ad-free version here.

Larry is very correct with his formula, and its the fastest way to calculate the sum of all integers up to n.
But for completeness, there are built-in Python functions, that perform what you have done, on lists with arbitrary elements. E.g.
sum()
>>> sum(range(11))
55
>>> sum([2,4,6])
12
or more general, reduce()
>>> import operator
>>> reduce(operator.add, range(11))
55

Consider that N+1, N-1+2, N-2+3, and so on all add up to the same number, and there are approximately N/2 instances like that (exactly N/2 if N is even).

What you have there is called arithmetic sequence and as suggested, you can compute it directly without overhead which might result from the recursion.
And I would say this is a homework despite what you say.