What is the lowest bound for the algorithm? - arrays

Let an algorithm which get unsorted array with the size of n. Let a number k<=n. The algorithm prints the k-smallest numbers from 1 to k (ascending). What is the lower bound for the algorithm (for every k)?
Omega(n)
Omega(k*logn)
Omega(n*logk)
Omega(n*logn)
#1,#2 Are both correct.
Now, from my understanding, if we want to find a lower-bound to an algorithm we need to look at the worst-case. If that the case, then obviously the worst-case is when k=n. We know that sorting an array is bounded by Omega(nlogn) so the right answer is #4.
Unfortunately, I am wrong and the right answer is #5.
Why?

It can be done in O(n + klogk).
Run selection algorithm to find the k smallest element - O(n)
Iterate and return the elements lower/equals k - O(n)
Another iteration might be needed in case of the array allows
duplicates, but it is still done in O(n)
Lastly, you need to sort these elements in O(klogk)
It is easy to see this solution is optimal - cannot get better than O(klogk) factor because otherwise for assigning k=n you could sort any array better, and a linear scan at least is a must to find the required elements to be printed.

Lets try with Linear time:
In order to find the k'th smallest element, we have to use "Randomized-Select" which has the average running time of O(n). And use that element as pivot for the quick sort.
Use Quick sort method to split the array[i] <= k and array[i]>k. This would take O(n) time
Take the unsorted left array[i]<=k (which has k elements) and do counting sort, which will obviously take O(k+K)
Finally the print operation will take O(k)
Total time = O(n)+O(k+K)+O(k) = O(n+k+K)
Here, k is the number of elements which are smaller or equal to K

Related

Time and Space Complexity of top k frequent elements in an array

There is a small confusion regarding the time and space complexity for the given problem:
Given an array of size N , return a list of top K frequent elements.
Based on the most popular solution:
Use a HashMap of size K with the count of each entry as value.
Build a MaxHeap of size K by traversing the HashMap generated above.
Pop the elements in the MaxHeap into a list and return the list.
K being the number of unique elements in the input.
The space and time complexity is: O(K) and O(K*log(K)
Now the confusion starts here. We know we are dealing with worst case complexity in the above analysis. So the worst value K can take is N, when all the elements in array are unique.
Hence K <= N. Thereby O(K) be represented as O(N) ??
Thereby, shouldn't the space and time complexity be O(N) and O(N*log(N)) for the above problem?
I know this is a technicality, but its been bothering me for a while. Please advise.
Yes, you are right since K<N, the time complexity for the hashmap part should be O(N).
But heap only have K elements in it and has the time complexity of O(Klog(K)) which if considered asymptotically is far larger than linear complexity of O(N) and hence results in final time complexity of O(Klog(K)).

Algorithm for finding if there's a "common number"

Let an array with the size of n. We need to write an algorithm which checks if there's a number which appears at least n/loglogn times.
I've understood that there's a way doing it in O(n*logloglogn) which goes something like this:
Find the median using select algorithm and count how many times it appears. if it appears more than n/loglogn we return true. It takes O(n).
Partition the array according the median. It takes O(n)
Apply the algorithm on both sides of the partition (two n/2 arrays).
If we reached a subarray of size less than n/loglogn, stop and return false.
Questions:
Is this algorithm correct?
The recurrence is: T(n) = 2T(n/2) + O(n) and the base case is T(n/loglogn) = O(1). Now, the largest number of calls in the recurrence-tree is O(logloglogn) and since every call is O(n) then the time complexity is O(n*logloglogn). Is that correct?
The suggested solution works, and the complexity is indeed O(n/logloglog(n)).
Let's say a "pass i" is the running of all recursive calls of depth i. Note that each pass requires O(n) time, since while each call is much less than O(n), there are several calls - and overall, each element is processed once in each "pass".
Now, we need to find the number of passes. This is done by solving the equation:
n/log(log(n)) = n / 2^x
<->
n/log(log(n)) * 2^x = n
And the idea is each call is dividing the array by half until you get to the predefined size of n/log(log(n)).
This problem is indeed solved for x in O(n/log(log(log(n))), as you can see in wolfram alpha, and thus the complexity is indeed O(nlog(log(log(n))))
As for correctness - that's because if an element repeats more than the required - it must be in some subarray with size greater/equals the required size, and by reducing constantly the size of the array, you will arrive to a case at some point where #repeats <= size(array) <= #repeats - at this point, you are going to find this element as the median, and find out it's indeed a "frequent item".
Some other approach, in O(n/log(log(n)) time - but with great constants is suggested by Karp-Papadimitriou-Shanker, and is based on filling a table with "candidates" while processing the array.

Inserting unknown number of elements into dynamic array in linear time

(This question is inspired by deque::insert() at index?, I was surprised that it wasn't covered in my algorithm lecture and that I also didn't find it mentioned in another question here and even not in Wikipedia :). I think it might be of general interest and I will answer it myself ...)
Dynamic arrays are datastructures that allow addition of elements at the end in amortized constant time O(1) (by doubling the size of the allocated memory each time it needs to grow, see Amortized time of dynamic array for a short analysis).
However, insertion of a single element in the middle of the array takes linear time O(n), since in the worst case (i.e. insertion at first position) all other elements needs to be shifted by one.
If I want to insert k elements at a specific index in the array, the naive approach of performit the insert operation k times would thus lead to a complexity of O(n*k) and, if k=O(n), to a quadratic complexity of O(n²).
If I know k in advance, the solution is quite easy: Expand the array if neccessary (possibly reallocating space), shift the elements starting at the insertion point by k and simply copy the new elements.
But there might be situations, where I do not know the number of elements I want to insert in advance: For example I might get the elements from a stream-like interface, so I only get a flag when the last element is read.
Is there a way to insert multiple (k) elements, where k is not known in advance, into a dynamic array at consecutive positions in linear time?
In fact there is a way and it is quite simple:
First append all k elements at the end of the array. Since appending one element takes O(1) time, this will be done in O(k) time.
Second rotate the elements into place. If you want to insert the elements at position index. For this you need to rotate the subarray A[pos..n-1] by k positions to the right (or n-pos-k positions to the left, which is equivalent). Rotation can be done in linear time by use of a reverse operation as explained in Algorithm to rotate an array in linear time. Thus the time needed for rotation is O(n).
Therefore the total time for the algorithm is O(k)+O(n)=O(n+k). If the number of elements to be inserted is in the order of n (k=O(n)), you'll get O(n+n)=O(2n)=O(n) and thus linear time.
You could simply allocate a new array of length k+n and insert the desired elements linearly.
newArr = new T[k + n];
for (int i = 0; i < k + n; i++)
newArr[i] = i <= insertionIndex ? oldArr[i]
: i <= insertionIndex + k ? toInsert[i - insertionIndex - 1]
: oldArr[i - k];
return newArr;
Each iteration takes constant time, and it runs k+n times, thus O(k+n) (or, O(n) if you so like).

Find the minimum number of elements required so that their sum equals or exceeds S

I know this can be done by sorting the array and taking the larger numbers until the required condition is met. That would take at least nlog(n) sorting time.
Is there any improvement over nlog(n).
We can assume all numbers are positive.
Here is an algorithm that is O(n + size(smallest subset) * log(n)). If the smallest subset is much smaller than the array, this will be O(n).
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_%28data_structure%29 if my description of the algorithm is unclear (it is light on details, but the details are all there).
Turn the array into a heap arranged such that the biggest element is available in time O(n).
Repeatedly extract the biggest element from the heap until their sum is large enough. This takes O(size(smallest subset) * log(n)).
This is almost certainly the answer they were hoping for, though not getting it shouldn't be a deal breaker.
Edit: Here is another variant that is often faster, but can be slower.
Walk through elements, until the sum of the first few exceeds S. Store current_sum.
Copy those elements into an array.
Heapify that array such that the minimum is easy to find, remember the minimum.
For each remaining element in the main array:
if min(in our heap) < element:
insert element into heap
increase current_sum by element
while S + min(in our heap) < current_sum:
current_sum -= min(in our heap)
remove min from heap
If we get to reject most of the array without manipulating our heap, this can be up to twice as fast as the previous solution. But it is also possible to be slower, such as when the last element in the array happens to be bigger than S.
Assuming the numbers are integers, you can improve upon the usual n lg(n) complexity of sorting because in this case we have the extra information that the values are between 0 and S (for our purposes, integers larger than S are the same as S).
Because the range of values is finite, you can use a non-comparative sorting algorithm such as Pigeonhole Sort or Radix Sort to go below n lg(n).
Note that these methods are dependent on some function of S, so if S gets large enough (and n stays small enough) you may be better off reverting to a comparative sort.
Here is an O(n) expected time solution to the problem. It's somewhat like Moron's idea but we don't throw out the work that our selection algorithm did in each step, and we start trying from an item potentially in the middle rather than using the repeated doubling approach.
Alternatively, It's really just quickselect with a little additional book keeping for the remaining sum.
First, it's clear that if you had the elements in sorted order, you could just pick the largest items first until you exceed the desired sum. Our solution is going to be like that, except we'll try as hard as we can to not to discover ordering information, because sorting is slow.
You want to be able to determine if a given value is the cut off. If we include that value and everything greater than it, we meet or exceed S, but when we remove it, then we are below S, then we are golden.
Here is the psuedo code, I didn't test it for edge cases, but this gets the idea across.
def Solve(arr, s):
# We could get rid of worse case O(n^2) behavior that basically never happens
# by selecting the median here deterministically, but in practice, the constant
# factor on the algorithm will be much worse.
p = random_element(arr)
left_arr, right_arr = partition(arr, p)
# assume p is in neither left_arr nor right_arr
right_sum = sum(right_arr)
if right_sum + p >= s:
if right_sum < s:
# solved it, p forms the cut off
return len(right_arr) + 1
# took too much, at least we eliminated left_arr and p
return Solve(right_arr, s)
else:
# didn't take enough yet, include all elements from and eliminate right_arr and p
return len(right_arr) + 1 + Solve(left_arr, s - right_sum - p)
One improvement (asymptotically) over Theta(nlogn) you can do is to get an O(n log K) time algorithm, where K is the required minimum number of elements.
Thus if K is constant, or say log n, this is better (asymptotically) than sorting. Of course if K is n^epsilon, then this is not better than Theta(n logn).
The way to do this is to use selection algorithms, which can tell you the ith largest element in O(n) time.
Now do a binary search for K, starting with i=1 (the largest) and doubling i etc at each turn.
You find the ith largest, and find the sum of the i largest elements and check if it is greater than S or not.
This way, you would run O(log K) runs of the selection algorithm (which is O(n)) for a total running time of O(n log K).
eliminate numbers < S, if you find some number ==S, then solved
pigeon-hole sort the numbers < S
Sum elements highest to lowest in the sorted order till you exceed S.

an algorithm in O(n) time complexity to find a pair of nos in an array which have the closest difference between each other

i am given an array of integers which are not necessarily sorted. I have to find a pair of nos whose difference between each other is least compared to any of the other pair of nos in the array. the time efficiency should be O(n).
I'm pretty sure you cannot get a general linear time algorithm for this problem!
However, since you have (bounded) integers, you can cheat a little and start by sorting the array using radix sort, which is linear time! Then just find the closest adjacent pair, which is linear again.
if you are looking for the smallest absolute difference between any pair of distinct integers, then ltjax's algorithm will given you the answer in linear time. however, as the problem is stated negative numbers are valid; in that case, find the largest, L, and smallest, S, numbers using a linear search, then the answer is S - L.
I think it may not wrong if I get first minimum element by Linear Search and then again apply loop to get second minimum element. for e.g.
min1=A[0];
for(i=0;iA[i])
min1=A[i];
}
min2=A[1];
for(i=1;iA[i])
min2=A[i];
}
diff=min2-min1;
I think you can find minimum two numbers and find the difference in this way.
index i pointing to 0, index j pointing to 1,
try to find min1 in even indexes via i, find min2 in odd indexes via j in single iteration and sub min1,min2.
If you know the maximum number of digits then apply radix sort O(n) in space and time

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