Re: Puzzle
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg2290] Re: Puzzle
- From: wagner at goober.cs.colorado.edu (Dave Wagner)
- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 12:40:31 -0400
- Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
In article <DGMpFD.ICL at wri.com>, Will Self <wself at viking.emcmt.edu> wrote: >Here's a nice puzzle. Find the four numbers in the following sequence >which total 100: {6, 44, 30, 15, 24, 12, 33, 23, 18}. It would seem that >there might be a nice way to do this with Mathematica. Any takers? > >Will Self >Billings, Montana Right after my last posting I realized that the code could be optimized in a number of ways. Here's how: First, here's the initial version of the code. In[68]:= Clear[sumto] sumto[seq_, k_, n_] := sumto[seq, k, n] = Module[{i, tmp}, Do[ tmp = sumto[Drop[seq, {i}], k-1, n-seq[[i]]]; If[tmp =!= Null, Return[Append[tmp, seq[[i]]]]], {i, Length[seq]} ] ] sumto[_, 0, 0] := {} sumto[___] := Null This is Will's data. In[72]:= nums = {6, 44, 30, 15, 24, 12, 33, 23, 18}; It takes over 3 seconds. In[73]:= sumto[nums, 4, 100] // Timing Out[73]= {3.23333 Second, {18, 23, 15, 44}} The first observation is that the above code allows calls to sumto in which the third argument is negative. As soon as that happens, failure is assured (since all of the integers are positive). Therefore, if we assume that all of the integers in the list will be positive, we can add the rule sumto[_, _, _?Negative] := Null to speed things up: In[87]:= Clear[sumto] sumto[seq_, k_, n_] := sumto[seq, k, n] = Module[{i, tmp}, Do[ tmp = sumto[Drop[seq, {i}], k-1, n-seq[[i]]]; If[tmp =!= Null, Return[Append[tmp, seq[[i]]]]], {i, Length[seq]} ] ] sumto[_, 0, 0] := {} sumto[_, _, _?Negative] := Null sumto[___] := Null That cut the running time in half. In[92]:= sumto[nums, 4, 100] // Timing Out[92]= {1.45 Second, {18, 23, 15, 44}} The next optimization is to note that as soon as sumto[_, 0, x] is called where x is non-zero, failure has occurred. This case can be trapped using sumto[_, 0, _] := Null (no check for the third argument being non-zero is necessary because there is a special case for sumto[_, 0, 0] already): In[93]:= Clear[sumto] sumto[seq_, k_, n_] := sumto[seq, k, n] = Module[{i, tmp}, Do[ tmp = sumto[Drop[seq, {i}], k-1, n-seq[[i]]]; If[tmp =!= Null, Return[Append[tmp, seq[[i]]]]], {i, Length[seq]} ] ] sumto[_, 0, 0] := {} sumto[_, 0, _] := Null sumto[_, _, _?Negative] := Null sumto[___] := Null This makes a huge difference in running time: In[99]:= sumto[nums, 4, 100] // Timing Out[99]= {0.583333 Second, {18, 23, 15, 44}} The final optimization is a very subtle one. In the recursive call to sumto, rather than eliminating the current element from the list using Drop[seq, {i}], we can eliminate all elements up to and including the i'th one using Drop[seq, i]. The reason that this is correct is that, if any of the elements 1, 2, ... i-1 were part of the solution, then that solution would already have been found. Since no solution has been found yet, then there is no need to consider those elements anymore. As a concrete example, consider sumto[{1,2,3}, 2, 5]. In the original algorithm, this results in a call to sumto[{1,3}, 1, 3] (when the 2 is eliminated). But we already know that 1 is not part of the solution, hence we can instead call sumto[{3}, 1, 3]. Here's the result: In[100]:= Clear[sumto] sumto[seq_, k_, n_] := sumto[seq, k, n] = Module[{i, tmp}, Do[ tmp = sumto[Drop[seq, i], k-1, n-seq[[i]]]; If[tmp =!= Null, Return[Append[tmp, seq[[i]]]]], {i, Length[seq]} ] ] sumto[_, 0, 0] := {} sumto[_, 0, _] := Null sumto[_, _, _?Negative] := Null sumto[___] := Null In[106]:= sumto[nums, 4, 100] // Timing Out[106]= {0.383333 Second, {18, 23, 15, 44}} I believe that this final modification makes result-caching unnecessary, as I now obtain slightly faster times without it: In[240]:= Clear[sumto]; sumto[seq_, k_, n_] := Module[{i, tmp}, Do[ tmp = sumto[Drop[seq, i], k-1, n-seq[[i]]]; If[tmp =!= Null, Return[Append[tmp, seq[[i]]]]], {i, Length[seq]} ] ]; sumto[_, 0, 0] := {}; sumto[_, 0, _] := Null; sumto[_, _, _?Negative] := Null; sumto[___] := Null; In[246]:= sumto[nums, 4, 100] // Timing Out[246]= {0.316667 Second, {18, 23, 15, 44}} I'd like to say something precise about which of these changes has the biggest effect by testing it on a variety of problems of different sizes, but it's difficult to come up with a good benchmark for this problem. Being too lazy to do a theoretical analysis of the algorithm, I was hoping someone else already had. What I found in a brief literature search was the following: First, this problem is clearly a constrained version of the integer knapsack problem, which can be stated thusly (Aho, Hopcroft & Ullman, "The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms", Addison-Wesley, 1974, page 401): "Given a sequence of integers S = i1, i2, ... in, and an integer k, is there a subsequence of S that sums exactly to k?" A,H&U state that this problem is NP-complete, which means that no polynomial-time solution is known for it. However, there's a crucial difference between the problem stated by Will Self and this one: in Will's version, one is constrained to find *four* numbers that sum to a given integer, whereas in the unconstrained version there could be 1, 2, ..., n numbers that sum to it. This constraint, together with the assumption that all of the numbers are positive, reduces the computational complexity of the problem quite significantly. On the other hand, Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest ("Introduction to Algorithms", McGraw-Hill, 1990, page 335) pose a different version of the knapsack problem in which there is a set of n items, each having a value vi and a weight wi. The problem is, given a knapsack with total capacity (in weight) of W, which items should be put in the knapsack to maximize the total value? C,L&U state on page 336 (in an exercise) that a dynamic programming algorithm with a time complexity of only n*W exists for this problem. This probelm is qualitatively different from the others in that the eventual total may be less than W (e.g., the knapsack may not be full), as long as the total value is maximized. Dave Wagner Principia Consulting (303) 786-8371 dbwagner at princon.com http://www.princon.com/princon