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Sum of 1st N natural numbers in O(no. of digits in N)

I'm trying to write a program to find sum of first N natural numbers i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 + .. + N modulo 1000000009
I know this can be done by using the formula N * (N+1) / 2 but I'm trying to find a sort of recursive function to calculate the sum.
I tried searching the web, but I didn't get any solution to this.
Actually, the problem here is that the number N can have upto 100000 digits.
So, here is what I've tried until now.
First I tried splitting the number into parts each of length 9, then convert them into integers so that I can perform arithmetic operations using the operators for integers.
For example, the number 52562372318723712 will be split into 52562372 & 318723712.
But I didn't find a way to manipulate these numbers.
Then again I tried to write a function as follows:
def find_sum(n):
# n is a string
if len(n) == 1:
# use the formula if single digit
return int(int(n[0]) * (int(n[0]) + 1) / 2)
# I'm not sure what to return here
# I'm expecting some manipulation with n[0]
# and a recursive call to the function itself
# I've also not used modulo here just for testing with smaller numbers
# I'll add it once I find a solution to this
return int(n[0]) * something + find_sum(n[1:])
I'm not able to find the something here.
Can this be solved like this?
or is there any other method to do so?
NOTE: I prefer a solution similar to the above function because I want to modify this function to meet my other requirements which I want to try myself before asking here. But if it is not possible, any other solution will also be helpful.
Please give me any hint to solve it.

Your best bet is to just use the N*(N+1)/2 formula -- but using it mod p. The only tricky part is to interpret division by 2 -- this had to be the inverse of 2 mod p. For p prime (or simply for p odd) this is very easy to compute: it is just (p+1)//2.
Thus:
def find_sum(n,p):
two_inv = (p+1)//2 #inverse of 2, mod p
return ((n%p)*((n+1)%p)*two_inv)%p
For example:
>>> find_sum(10000000,1000000009)
4550000
>>> sum(range(1,10000001))%1000000009
4550000
Note that the above function will fail if you pass an even number for p.
On Edit as #user11908059 observed, it is possible to dispense with multiplication by the modular inverse of 2. As an added benefit, this approach no longer depends on the modulus being odd:
def find_sum2(n,k):
if n % 2 == 0:
a,b = (n//2) % k, (n+1) % k
else:
a,b = n % k, ((n+1)//2) % k
return (a*b) % k

How to Recursively Multiply two positive integers without using the * operator (or / operator) ? . You can use addition, subtraction, and bit shifting

I stumbled upon this solution, but I am not able to understand what exactly is happening in this. Can someone please explain!
From what I understand it is trying to count the number of cells in a*b grid by counting half the cells and then doubling it. But I am not able to understand the recursive calls.
Pleas don't suggest other solutions, try to explain this solution please :)
def minProduct(a,b):
bigger = b if a < b else a #a < b ? b : a
smaller = a if a < b else b #a < b ? a : b
return minProductHelper(smaller,bigger)
def minProductHelper(smaller, bigger):
if smaller == 0:
return 0
elif smaller == 1:
return bigger
# Compute half. If uneven, compute other half. If even, double it
s = smaller >> 1 # divide by 2
side1 = minProduct(s,bigger)
side2 = side1
if smaller % 2 == 1:
side2 = minProductHelper(smaller - s, bigger)
return side1 + side2
print(minProduct(5,6))

This is a recursive divide-and-conquer algorithm, in a sense. Bit shifting left by 1 effectively divides a number by 2 (discarding any remainder). minProductHelper divides smaller by 2 using s = smaller >> 1 and then returns the recursively derived sum of s * bigger and (smaller - s) * bigger. Because of the properties of addition and multiplication, you have that ((smaller - s) * bigger) + (s * bigger) == smaller * bigger which is the outcome you want. You have two base cases which are when smaller is either 0 or 1, so you can imagine that a call to minProduct(a,b) will keep cutting a or b into halves (and those halves into halves, etc.) until all it has to do is sum a bunch of products involving 0 and some number or 1 and some number, which can be determined without having to use the * operator. The smaller number is always cut in half rather than the larger number because this allows the base cases to be reached with less recursive calls.

Suppose you are multiplying 5 and 6 together. Then the program first figures out the smallest number i.e. 5. It then calls itself by dividing the smallest number into two whole parts (nearly equal).
minProduct(5,6)=minProduct(2,6)+minProduct(3,6). Then minProduct(2,6) is calculated similarly into minProduct(1,6)+minProduct(1,6). Now that the smaller number is one the program simply returns 6 and the values are calculated back.This happens to each function call.
minProduct(5,6) =minProduct(2,6)+minProduct(3,6) =minProduct(1,6)+minProduct(1,6)+minProduct(3,6) (Let minProduct(3,6)=18) for cohesion) =6+6+18 =30
Why figure out the smallest number first?
The previous answer deals with precisely why the smaller number was used instead of the larger number. Take two arbitrary numbers 2 and 1000. I need to figure out what 2*1000 is. It is easier to figure out 1000+1000 then (2+2+. ..+2). Less function calls means faster algorithm.
Why was there a condition for minProduct(0,a)?
You did see why there was a condition for minProduct(1,a). But there was a condition for minProduct(0,a) because there is a special case for multiplication by 2. When you call minProduct(2,3). This resolves to minProduct(2,3) and minProduct(0,3). So you need to handle this separately.

Number of multiplications done in iterated squaring

The following code computes a**b using iterated squaring:
def power(a,b):
result=1
while b>0:
if b % 2 == 1:
result = result*a
a = a*a
b = b//2
return result
Suppose the decimal numbers a and b have n and m bits in their binary representation.
I'm trying to understand how many multiplications the code does for the smallest and biggest numbers a and b could be depending on n and m.
I know that in lines 5 and 6 of the code, a multiplication is done, but I'm struggling expressing the number of multiplications with the number of bits of a and b in their binary representation.
Any help appreciated.

Well, the number of multiplications depend only on one factor for this algorithm - which is b (while b > 0).
We meet operations that changes b's value inside the loop once, where b = b//2.
While dealing with binary representation, dividing by two leads to the last bit being shifted right - and since we got m bits in b, that would mean the loop will be executed m times.
Since every time we have at least one multiplication and maximum two (depending on the number of 1s in m), and m is guaranteed to be larger than 0 for the loop to occur, we get a total of minimum m+1 and maximum m*2 multiplications.

Capturing all data in non-whole train, test, and validate splits

just wondering if a better solution exists for this sort of problem.
We know that for a X/Y percentage split of an even number we can get an exact split of the data - for example for data size 10:
10 * .6 = 6
10 * .4 = 4
10
Splitting data this way is easy, and we can guarantee we have all of the data and nothing is lost. However where I am struggling is on less friendly numbers - take 11
11 * .6 = 6.6
11 * .4 = 4.4
11
However we can't index into an array at i = 6.6 for example. So we have to decide how to to do this. If we take JUST the integer portion we lose 1 data point -
First set = 0..6
Second set = 6..10
This would be the same case if we floored the numbers.
However, if we take the ceiling of the numbers:
First set = 0..7
Second set = 7..12
And we've read past the end of our array.
This gets even worse when we throw in a 3rd or 4th split (30,30,20,20 for example).
Is there a standard splitting procedure for these kinds of problems? Is data loss accepted? It seems like data loss would be unacceptable for dependent data, such as time series.
Thanks!
EDIT: The values .6 and .4 are chosen by me. They could be any two numbers that sum to 1.

First of all, notice that your problem is not limited to odd-sized arrays as you claim, but any-sized arrays. How would you make the 56%-44% split of a 10 element array? Or a 60%-40% split of a 4 element array?
There is no standard procedure. In many cases, programmers do not care that much about an exact split and they either do it by flooring or rounding one quantity (the size of the first set), while taking the complementary (array length - rounded size) for the other (the size of the second).
This might be ok in most cases when this is an one-off calculation and accuracy is not required. You have to ask yourself what your requirements are. For example: are you taking thousands of 10-sized arrays and each time you are splitting them 56%-44% doing some calculations and returning a result? You have to ask yourself what accuracy do you want. Do you care if your result ends up being
the 60%-40% split or the 50%-50% split?
As another example imagine that you are doing a 4-way equal split of 25%-25%-25%-25%. If you have 10 elements and you apply the rounding technique you end up with 3,3,3,1 elements. Surely this will mess up your results.
If you do care about all these inaccuracies then the first step is consider whether you can to adjust either the array size and/or the split ratio(s).
If these are set in stone then the only way to have an accurate split of any ratios of any sized array is to make it probabilistic. You have to split multiple arrays for this to work (meaning you have to apply the same split ratio to same-sized arrays multiple times). The more arrays the better (or you can use the same array multiple times).
So imagine that you have to make a 56%-44% split of a 10 sized array. This means that you need to split it in 5.6 elements and 4.4 elements on the average.
There are many ways you can achieve a 5.6 element average. The easiest one (and the one with the smallest variance in the sequence of tries) is to have 60% of the time a set with 6 elements and 40% of the time a set that has 5 elements.
0.6*6 + 0.4*5 = 5.6
In terms of code this is what you can do to decide on the size of the set each time:
import random
array_size = 10
first_split = 0.56
avg_split_size = array_size * first_split
floored_split_size = int(avg_split_size)
if avg_split_size > floored_split_size:
if random.uniform(0,1) > avg_split_size - floored_split_size:
this_split_size = floored_split_size
else:
this_split_size = floored_split_size + 1
else:
this_split_size = avg_split_size
You could make the code more compact, I just made an outline here so you get the idea. I hope this helps.

Instead of using ciel() or floor() use round() instead. For example:
>>> round(6.6)
7.0
The value returned will be of float type. For getting the integer value, type-cast it to int as:
>>> int(round(6.6))
7
This will be the value of your first split. For getting the second split, calculate it using len(data) - split1_val. This will be applicable in case of 2 split problem.
In case of 3 split, take round value of two split and take the value of 3rd split as the value of len(my_list) - val_split_1 - val_split2
In a Generic way, For N split:
Take the round() value of N-1 split. And for the last value, do len(data) - "value of N round() values".
where len() gives the length of the list.

Let's first consider just splitting the set into two pieces.
Let n be the number of elements we are splitting, and p and q be the proportions, so that
p+q == 1
I assert that the parts after the decimal point will always sum to either 1 or 0, so we should use floor on one and ceil on the other, and we will always be right.
Here is a function that does that, along with a test. I left the print statements in but they are commented out.
def simpleSplitN(n, p, q):
"split n into proportions p and q and return indices"
np = math.ceil(n*p)
nq = math.floor(n*q)
#print n, sum([np, nq]) #np and nq are the proportions
return [0, np] #these are the indices we would use
#test for simpleSplitN
for i in range(1, 10):
p = i/10.0;
q = 1-p
simpleSplitN(37, p, q);
For the mathematically inclined, here is the proof that the decimal proportions will sum to 1
-----------------------
We can express p*n as n/(1/p), and so by the division algorithm we get integers k and r
n == k*(1/p) + r with 0 <= r < (1/p)
Thus r/(1/p) == p*r < 1
We can do exactly the same for q, getting
q*r < 1 (this is a different r)
It is important to note that q*r and p*r are the part after the decimal when we divide our n.
Now we can add them together (we've added subscripts now)
0 <= p*(r_1) < 1
0 <= q*(r_2) < 1
=> 0 < p*r + q*r == p*n + q*n + k_1 + k_2 == n + k_1 + k_2 < 2
But by closure of the integers, n + k_1 + k_2 is an integer and so
0 < n + k_1 + k_2 < 2
means that p*r + q*r must be either 0 or 1. It will only be 0 in the case that our n is divided evenly.
Otherwise we can now see that our fractional parts will always sum to 1.
-----------------------
We can do a very similar (but slightly more complicated) proof for splitting n into an arbitrary number (say N) parts, but instead of them summing to 1, they will sum to an integer less than N.
Here is the general function, it has uncommented print statements for verification purposes.
import math
import random
def splitN(n, c):
"""Compute indices that can be used to split
a dataset of n items into a list of proportions c
by first dividing them naively and then distributing
the decimal parts of said division randomly
"""
nc = [n*i for i in c];
nr = [n*i - int(n*i) for i in c] #the decimal parts
N = int(round(sum(nr))) #sum of all decimal parts
print N, nc
for i in range(0, len(nc)):
nc[i] = math.floor(nc[i])
for i in range(N): #randomly distribute leftovers
nc[random.randint(1, len(nc)) - 1] += 1
print n,sum(nc); #nc now contains the proportions
out = [0] #compute a cumulative sum
for i in range(0, len(nc) - 1):
out.append(out[-1] + nc[i])
print out
return out
#test for splitN with various proportions
c = [.1,.2,.3,.4]
c = [.2,.2,.2,.2,.2]
c = [.3, .2, .2, .3]
for n in range( 10, 40 ):
print splitN(n, c)
If we have leftovers, we will never get an even split, so we distribute them randomly, like #Thanassis said. If you don't like the dependency on random, then you could just add them all at the beginning or at even intervals.
Both of my functions output indices but they compute proportions and thus could be slightly modified to output those instead per user preference.

Unlucky number 13

I came across this problem Unlucky number 13! recently but could not think of efficient solution this.
Problem statement :
N is taken as input.
N can be very large 0<= N <= 1000000009
Find total number of such strings that are made of exactly N characters which don't include "13". The strings may contain any integer from 0-9, repeated any number of times.
# Example:
# N = 2 :
# output : 99 (0-99 without 13 number)
# N =1 :
# output : 10 (0-9 without 13 number)
My solution:
N = int(raw_input())
if N < 2:
print 10
else:
without_13 = 10
for i in range(10, int('9' * N)+1):
string = str(i)
if string.count("13") >= 1:
continue
without_13 += 1
print without_13
Output
The output file should contain answer to each query in a new line modulo 1000000009.
Any other efficient way to solve this ? My solution gives time limit exceeded on coding site.

I think this can be solved via recursion:
ans(n) = { ans([n/2])^2 - ans([n/2]-1)^2 }, if n is even
ans(n) = { ans([n/2]+1)*ans([n/2]) - ans([n/2])*ans([n/2]-1) }, if n is odd
Base Cases:
ans(0) = 1
ans(1) = 10
It's implementation is running quite fast even for larger inputs like 10^9 ( which is expected as its complexity is O(log[n]) instead of O(n) like the other answers ):
cache = {}
mod = 1000000009
def ans(n):
if cache.has_key(n):
return cache[n]
if n == 0:
cache[n] = 1
return cache[n]
if n == 1:
cache[n] = 10
return cache[n]
temp1 = ans(n/2)
temp2 = ans(n/2-1)
if (n & 1) == 0:
cache[n] = (temp1*temp1 - temp2*temp2) % mod
else:
temp3 = ans(n/2 + 1)
cache[n] = (temp1 * (temp3 - temp2)) % mod
return cache[n]
print ans(1000000000)
Online Demo
Explanation:
Let a string s have even number of digits 'n'.
Let ans(n) be the answer for the input n, i.e. the number of strings without the substring 13 in them.
Therefore, the answer for string s having length n can be written as the multiplication of the answer for the first half of the string (ans([n/2])) and the answer for the second half of the string (ans([n/2])), minus the number of cases where the string 13 appears in the middle of the number n, i.e. when the last digit of the first half is 1 and the first digit of the second half is 3.
This can expressed mathematically as:
ans(n) = ans([n/2])^2 - ans([n/2]-1)*2
Similarly for the cases where the input number n is odd, we can derive the following equation:
ans(n) = ans([n/2]+1)*ans([n/2]) - ans([n/2])*ans([n/2]-1)

I get the feeling that this question is designed with the expectation that you would initially instinctively do it the way you have. However, I believe there's a slightly different approach that would be faster.
You can produce all the numbers that contain the number 13 yourself, without having to loop through all the numbers in between. For example:
2 digits:
13
3 digits position 1:
113
213
313 etc.
3 digits position 2: 131
132
133 etc.
Therefore, you don't have to check all the number from 0 to n*9. You simply count all the numbers with 13 in them until the length is larger than N.
This may not be the fastest solution (in fact I'd be surprised if this couldn't be solved efficiently by using some mathematics trickery) but I believe it will be more efficient than the approach you have currently taken.

This a P&C problem. I'm going to assume 0 is valid string and so is 00, 000 and so on, each being treated distinct from the other.
The total number of strings not containing 13, of length N, is unsurprisingly given by:
(Total Number of strings of length N) - (Total number of strings of length N that have 13 in them)
Now, the Total number of strings of length N is easy, you have 10 digits and N slots to put them in: 10^N.
The number of strings of length N with 13 in them is a little trickier.
You'd think you can do something like this:
=> (N-1)C1 * 10^(N-2)
=> (N-1) * 10^(N-2)
But you'd be wrong, or more accurately, you'd be over counting certain strings. For example, you'd be over counting the set of string that have two or more 13s in them.
What you really need to do is apply the inclusion-exclusion principle to count the number of strings with 13 in them, so that they're all included once.
If you look at this problem as a set counting problem, you have quite a few sets:
S(0,N): Set of all strings of Length N.
S(1,N): Set of all strings of Length N, with at least one '13' in it.
S(2,N): Set of all strings of Length N, with at least two '13's in it.
...
S(N/2,N): Set of all strings of Length N, with at least floor(N/2) '13's in it.
You want the set of all strings with 13 in them, but counted at most once. You can use the inclusion-exclusion principle for computing that set.

Let f(n) be the number of sequences of length n that have no "13" in them, and g(n) be the number of sequences of length n that have "13" in them.
Then f(n) = 10^n - g(n) (in mathematical notation), because it's the number of possible sequences (10^n) minus the ones that contain "13".
Base cases:
f(0) = 1
g(0) = 0
f(1) = 10
g(1) = 0
When looking for the sequences with "13", a sequence can have a "13" at the beginning. That will account for 10^(n-2) possible sequences with "13" in them. It could also have a "13" in the second position, again accounting for 10^(n-2) possible sequences. But if it has a "13" in the third position, and we'd assume there would also be 10^(n-2) possible sequences, we could those twice that already had a "13" in the first position. So we have to substract them. Instead, we count 10^(n-4) times f(2) (because those are exactly the combinations in the first two positions that don't have "13" in them).
E.g. for g(5):
g(5) = 10^(n-2) + 10^(n-2) + f(2)*10^(n-4) + f(3)*10^(n-5)
We can rewrite that to look the same everywhere:
g(5) = f(0)*10^(n-2) + f(1)*10^(n-3) + f(2)*10^(n-4) + f(3)*10^(n-5)
Or simply the sum of f(i)*10^(n-(i+2)) with i ranging from 0 to n-2.
In Python:
from functools import lru_cache
#lru_cache(maxsize=1024)
def f(n):
return 10**n - g(n)
#lru_cache(maxsize=1024)
def g(n):
return sum(f(i)*10**(n-(i+2)) for i in range(n-1)) # range is exclusive
The lru_cache is optional, but often a good idea when working with recursion.
>>> [f(n) for n in range(10)]
[1, 10, 99, 980, 9701, 96030, 950599, 9409960, 93149001, 922080050]
The results are instant and it works for very large numbers.

In fact this question is more about math than about python.
For N figures there is 10^N possible unique strings. To get the answer to the problem we need to subtract the number of string containing "13".
If string starts from "13" we have 10^(N-2) possible unique strings. If we have 13 at the second possition (e.i. a string like x13...), we again have 10^(N-2) possibilities. But we can't continue this logic further as this will lead us to double calculation of string which have 13 at different possitions. For example for N=4 there will be a string "1313" which we will calculate twice. To avoid this we should calculate only those strings which we haven't calculated before. So for "13" on possition p (counting from 0) we should find the number of unique string which don't have "13" on the left side from p, that is for each p
number_of_strings_for_13_at_p = total_number_of_strings_without_13(N=p-1) * 10^(N-p-2)
So we recursevily define the total_number_of_strings_without_13 function.
Here is the idea in the code:
def number_of_strings_without_13(N):
sum_numbers_with_13 = 0
for p in range(N-1):
if p < 2:
sum_numbers_with_13 += 10**(N-2)
else:
sum_numbers_with_13 += number_of_strings_without_13(p) * 10**(N-p-2)
return 10**N - sum_numbers_with_13
I should say that 10**N means 10 in the power of N. All the other is described above. The functions also has a surprisingly pleasent ability to give correct answers for N=1 and N=2.
To test this works correct I've rewritten your code into function and refactored a little bit:
def number_of_strings_without_13_bruteforce(N):
without_13 = 0
for i in range(10**N):
if str(i).count("13"):
continue
without_13 += 1
return without_13
for N in range(1, 7):
print(number_of_strings_without_13(N),
number_of_strings_without_13_bruteforce(N))
They gave the same answers. With bigger N bruteforce is very slow. But for very large N recursive function also gets mush slower. There is a well known solution for that: as we use the value of number_of_strings_without_13 with parameters smaller than N multiple times, we should remember the answers and not recalculate them each time. It's quite simple to do like this:
def number_of_strings_without_13(N, answers=dict()):
if N in answers:
return answers[N]
sum_numbers_with_13 = 0
for p in range(N-1):
if p < 2:
sum_numbers_with_13 += 10**(N-2)
else:
sum_numbers_with_13 += number_of_strings_without_13(p) * 10**(N-p-2)
result = 10**N - sum_numbers_with_13
answers[N] = result
return result

Thanks to L3viathan's comment now it is clear. The logic is beautiful.
Let's assume a(n) is a number of strings of n digits without "13" in it. If we know all the good strings for n-1, we can add one more digit to the left of each string and calculate a(n). As we can combine previous digits with any of 10 new, we will get 10*a(n-1) different strings. But we must subtract the number of strings, which now starts with "13" which we wrongly summed like OK at the previous step. There is a(n-2) of such wrongly added strings. So a(n) = 10*a(n-1) - a(n-2). That is it. Such simple.
What is even more interesting is that this sequence can be calculated without iterations with a formula https://oeis.org/A004189 But practically that doesn't helps much, as the formula requires floating point calculations which will lead to rounding and would not work for big n (will give answer with some mistake).
Nevertheless the original sequence is quite easy to calculate and it doesn't need to store all the previous values, just the last two. So here is the code
def number_of_strings(n):
result = 0
result1 = 99
result2 = 10
if n == 1:
return result2
if n == 2:
return result1
for i in range(3, n+1):
result = 10*result1 - result2
result2 = result1
result1 = result
return result
This one is several orders faster than my previous suggestion. And memory consumption is now just O(n)
P.S. If you run this with Python2, you'd better change range to xrange

This python3 solution meets time and memory requirement of HackerEarth
from functools import lru_cache
mod = 1000000009
#lru_cache(1024)
def ans(n):
if n == 0:
return 1
if n == 1:
return 10
temp1 = ans(n//2)
temp2 = ans(n//2-1)
if (n & 1) == 0:
return (temp1*temp1 - temp2*temp2) % mod
else:
temp3 = ans(n//2 + 1)
return (temp1 * (temp3 - temp2)) % mod
for t in range(int(input())):
n = int(input())
print(ans(n))

I came across this problem on
https://www.hackerearth.com/problem/algorithm/the-unlucky-13-d7aea1ff/
I haven't been able to get the judge to accept my solution(s) in Python but (2) in ANSI C worked just fine.
Straightforward recursive counting of a(n) = 10*a(n-1) - a(n-2) is pretty slow when getting to large numbers but there are several options (one which is not mentioned here yet):
1.) using generating functions:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=g%28n%2B1%29%3D10g%28n%29+-g%28n-1%29%2C+g%280%29%3D1%2C+g%281%29%3D10
the powers should be counted using squaring and modulo needs to be inserted cleverly into that and the numbers must be rounded but Python solution was slow for the judge anyway (it took 7s on my laptop and judge needs this to be counted under 1.5s)
2.) using matrices:
the idea is that we can get vector [a(n), a(n-1)] by multiplying vector [a(n-1), a(n-2)] by specific matrix constructed from equation a(n) = 10*a(n-1) - a(n-2)
| a(n) | = | 10 -1 | * | a(n-1) |
| a(n-1) | | 1 0 | | a(n-2) |
and by induction:
| a(n) | = | 10 -1 |^(n-1) * | a(1) |
| a(n-1) | | 1 0 | | a(0) |
the matrix multiplication in 2D should be done via squaring using modulo. It should be hardcoded rather counted via for cycles as it is much faster.
Again this was slow for Python (8s on my laptop) but fast for ANSI C (0.3s)
3.) the solution proposed by Anmol Singh Jaggi above which is the fastest in Python (3s) but the memory consumption for cache is big enough to break memory limits of the judge. Removing cache or limiting it makes the computation very slow.

You are given a string S of length N. The string S consists of digits from 1-9, Consider the string indexing to be 1-based.
You need to divide the string into blocks such that the i block contains the elements from the index((i 1) • X +1) to min(N, (i + X)) (both inclusive). A number is valid if it is formed by choosing exactly one digit from each block and placing the digits in the order of their block
number