Interesting Powers Of 2 - algorithm/ Math (from Hackerrank ACM APC) - c

I came across a problem from a recent competition.
I was unable to figure out a solution, and no editorial for the question is yet available.
Question Link
I am quoting the problem statement here also in case the link doesn't work.
Find the number of integers n which are greater than or equal to A and less than or equal to B (A<= n <=B) and the decimal representation of 2^n ends in n.
Ex: 2^36 = 68719476736 which ends in “36”.
INPUT
The first line contains an integer T i.e. number of test cases. T lines follow, each containing two integers A and B.
Constraints
1 <= T <= 10^5
A<=B
A,B <= 10^150
OUTPUT
Print T lines each containing the answer to the corresponding testcase.
Sample Input
2
36 36
100 500
Sample Output
1
0

As often happens on programming competitions I have come up with an heuristics I have not proven, but seems plausible. I have written a short program to find the numbers up to 1000000 and they are:
36
736
8736
48736
948736
Thus my theory is the following - each consecutive number is suffixed with the previous one and only adds one digit. Hope this will set you on the right track for the problem. Note that if my assumption is right than you only need to find 150 numbers and finding each consecutive number requires checking 9 digits that may be added.
A general advice for similar problems - always try to find the first few numbers and think of some relation.
Also often it happens on a competition that you come up with a theory like the one I propose above, but have no time to prove it. You can't afford the time to prove it. Simply hope you are right and code.
EDIT: I believe I was able to prove my conjecture above(in fact I have missed some numbers -see end of the post). First let me point out that as v3ga states in a comment the algorithm above works up until 75353432948736 as no digit can be prepended to make the new number "interesting" as per the definition you give. However I completely missed another option - you may prepend some number of 0 and then add a non-zero digit.
I will now proof a lemma:
Lemma: if a1a2...an is an interesting number and n is more than 3, then a2...an also is interesting.
Proof:
2a1a2...an = 2a1*10n - 1*2a2a2...an
Now I will prove that 2a1*10n - 1*2a2a2...an is comparable to 2a2a2...an modulo 10n-1.
To do that lets prove that 2a1*10n - 1*2a2a2...an - 2a2a2...an is divisible by 10n-1.
2a1*10n - 1*2a2a2...an - 2a2a2...an =
2a2a2...an * (2a1*10n - 1 - 1)
a2a2...an is more than n-1 for the values we consider.
Thus all that's left to prove to have 10n-1 dividing the difference is that 5n-1 divides 2a1*10n - 1 - 1.
For this I will use Euler's theorem:
2phi(5n-1) = 1 (modulo 5n-1).
Now phi(5n-1) = 4*(5n-2) and for n >= 3 4*(5n-2) will divide a1*10n - 1(actually even solely 10n - 1).
Thus 2a1*10n - 1 gives remainder 1 modulo 5n-1 and so 5n-1 divides 2a1*10n - 1 - 1.
Consequently 10n-1 divides 2a2a2...an * (2a1*10n - 1 - 1) and so the last n - 1 digits of 2a1a2a2...an and 2a2a3a4...an are the same.
Now as a1a2a2...an is interesting the last n digits of 2a1a2a2...an are a1a2a2...an and so the last n-1 digits of 2a2a3a4...an are a2a3a4...an and consequently a2a3a4...an is also interesting. QED.
Use this lemma and you will be able to solve the problem. Please note that you may also prepend some zeros and then add a non-zero number.

In general, you can try solving these problems by finding some pattern in the output. Our team got this problem accepted at the contest. Our approach was to find a general pattern in the values that satisfy the criteria. If you print the first few such digits, then you will find the following pattern
36
736
8736
48736
948736
Thus the next number after 948736 should be of 7 digits and can be any one of 1948736, 2948736, 3948736, 4948736, 5948736, 6948736, 7948736, 8948736, 9948736. Thus check which value is valid and you have the next number. Continuing in this fashion you can back yourself to get all the 150 numbers.
But there is a problem here. There will be some numbers that do not immediately follow from the previous number by appending '1' to '9'. To counter this you can now start appending values from 10 to 99 and now check if there is a valid number or not. If there is still no valid number, then again try appending numbers from 100 to 999.
Now employing this hack, you will get all the 137 values that satisfy the criterion given in the question and easily answer all the queries. For example, working java code that implements this is shown here. It prints all the 137 values.
import java.io.*;
import java.math.*;
import java.util.*;
class Solution
{
public static void main(String[] args)throws java.lang.Exception{
new Solution().run();
}
void run()throws java.lang.Exception{
BigInteger[] powers = new BigInteger[152];
powers[0] = one;
for(int i=1; i<=150; i++){
powers[i] = powers[i-1].multiply(ten);
}
BigInteger[] answers = new BigInteger[152];
answers[2] = BigInteger.valueOf(36);
answers[3] = BigInteger.valueOf(736);
int last = 3;
for(int i=4; i<=150; i++){
int dif = i-last;
BigInteger start = ten.pow(dif-1);
BigInteger end = start.multiply(ten);
while(start.compareTo(end) < 0){
BigInteger newVal = powers[last].multiply(start);
newVal = newVal.add(answers[last]);
BigInteger modPow = pow(two, newVal, powers[i]);
if(modPow.equals(newVal)){
answers[i] = newVal;
System.out.println(answers[i]);
last = i;
break;
}
start = start.add(one);
}
}
}
BigInteger pow(BigInteger b, BigInteger e, BigInteger mod){
if(e.equals(zero)){
return one;
}
if(e.mod(two).equals(zero)){
BigInteger x = pow(b, e.divide(two), mod);
x = x.multiply(x).mod(mod);
return x;
}else{
BigInteger x = pow(b, e.divide(two), mod);
x = x.multiply(x).mod(mod);
x = x.multiply(two).mod(mod);
return x;
}
}
BigInteger ten = BigInteger.valueOf(10);
BigInteger zero = BigInteger.ZERO;
BigInteger one = BigInteger.ONE;
BigInteger two = BigInteger.valueOf(2);
}

This is very interesting property. During the contest, I found that 36 was the only number under 500 checking with python...
The property is : 2^36 last two digits are 36, last three digits are 736, so next number is 736. 2^736 has last three digits as 736, and next number is 8376...
And the series is : 36 , 736 , 8736 , 48736 , 948736 ...
And then started with BigInt class in C++.
But alas there was no time, and 4th problem wasn't solved. But after the contest, we did it in python.
here's link : Ideone it!
def powm(i):
j = 10
a = 1
while i:
if i % 2:
a = a * j
i /= 2
j *= j
return a
def power(n, i):
m = powm(i)
y = 1
x = 2
while n:
if n % 2 == 1:
y = y * x % m
x = x * x % m
n /= 2
return y
mylist = []
mylist.append(power(36, 2))
n = mylist[0]
print(n)
for i in range(3, 170):
p = power(n, i)
print p
if p != n:
mylist.append(p)
n = p
t = input()
while t:
x = raw_input().split(" ")
a = int(x[0])
b = int(x[1])
i = 0
#while i <= 150:
#print mylist[i]
#i += 1
#print power(8719476736,14)
while mylist[i] < a:
i += 1
ans = 0
while mylist[i] <= b:
i += 1
ans += 1
print ans
t -= 1

The final digits start to repeat after 20 increments. So for any n with the final digit 1, the final digit of the answer will be 2. So most values of n can be eliminated immediately.
2^1 = 2
2^21 = 2097152
2^101 = 2535301200456458802993406410752
2^2 = 4
2^22 = 4194304
2^42 = 4398046511104
In fact only two possibilities share a final digit:
2^14 = 16384
2^16 = 65536
2^34 = 17179869184
2^36 = 68719476736
If n is 14+20x or 16+20x, then it might work, so you'll need to check it. Otherwise, it cannot work.

I am not very good with such problems. But modular exponentiation appears to be key in your case.
Repeat for all n in the range A to B:
1. Find k, the no of digits in n. This can be done in O(logn)
2. Find 2^n (mod 10^k) using modular exponentiation and check if it is equal to n. This'll take O(n) time. (actually, O(n) multiplications)
EDIT
Actually, don't repeat the whole process for each n. Given 2^n (mod 10^k), we can find 2^(n+1) (mod 10^k) in constant time. Use this fact to speed it up further
EDIT - 2
This doesn't work for such large range.

Related

Algorithm to find number of palindromes in interval

I'm currently tasked with writing a program that calculates amount of palindromes in any base from interval of <2;36>. The problem is that my solution has time complexity of O(n^2) at best and that is, if I was frank, really slow.
So far I've tried naive solutions such as converting all numbers from the interval to the base that is required, saving the conversion of the number to array and then checking each of the elements one by one.
This is what I've got so far :
int isTrue = 1;
int arr[64];
while(n > 0)
{
arr[counter] = n % base;
n = n / base;
counter++;
}
for(int i = 0; i < counter; i ++)
{
if(arr[i] != arr[counter - i - 1])
{
isTrue = 0;
break;
}
}
It is not good by any stretch, but it does work for the basic test. The problem is that I'm currently trying to solve bonus one which works with much bigger numbers.
By much bigger numbers I mean intervals that span billions of numbers, one of the inputs is for example this:
c 15 62103360044 155888062462
Result : 123502
Where c is task that the program is supposed to do (there was option of l which listed all palindromes which doesn't occur in the bonus tests), 15 is base and the two other numbers are the limits of the interval.
I'm supposed to count palindromes of five such intervals under one second and honestly, I'm pretty stuck.
I would appreciate any help, I'm sorry if I formatted my question wrongly or if it was too drawn out - This is the first time I've asked a question here.
Doing a palindrome check faster is a minor optimisation.
Initially I would even use java's number to String conversion.
What you want is to step through the interval in larger leaps.
You can use recursion for simplification in the initial version of your algorithm.
Let's look for base 10:
62_103_360_044
155_888_062_462
6 ... 6 (recursion on the middle part)
7 ... 7
8 ... 8
9 ... 9
1 ... 1
You need:
Number of digits (your counter)
First most significant digit
Parameters start and end
For this step you only need to increment one digit, which even may be done as char.
Notice also that the recursive call on ... gives the same result for 7, 8 and 9 with start 000..000 and end 999..999.
This will be tremendously faster. Happy coding.
Usage of recursion:
I am not giving a clean answer, as that would defeat the task's challenge.
public BigInteger palindromesInInterval(int base, BigInteger from, BigInteger to) {
return palindromesRec(base, from.toString(base), to.toString(base));
}
private BigInteger palindromesRec(int base, String from, String to) {
// Do the simple work:
if (from.length() > to.length()) {
return BigInteger.ZERO;
}
if (from.length() == to.length() && from.compareTo(to) > 0) {
return BigInteger.ZERO;
}
if (from.length() == 1) {
...
}
// Do a step:
int highDigit = Integer.parseInt(from.substring(0, 1), base);
int lowDigit = Integer.parseInt(from.substring(from.length() - 1), base);
BigInteger sum = BigInteger.ZERO;
int digit = Math.max(highDigit, lowDigit);
String from2 = from.substring(1, from.length() - 2); // Can start with 0
String to2 = "1000...000" -1; // Niners so to say.
while (digit < base) {
...
sum = sum.add(palidromesRec(base, from2, to2)); // RECURSION
from2 = "000...000";
}
...
return sum;
}
Recursion calling oneself, here only once, without extra parameters, which often are used. For instance it is much easier to split the work in:
from 6 2_103_360_04 4
to 9 9 .. 9 9
from 1 00 .. 0 1
to 1 55_888_062_46 2
And calculate for every X
from X 000 X (n zeroes)
to X 999 X (n time (base-1))
as base(n+1)/2.
For that you need a level of abstraction/simplification. Keep-it-simple.

Given a set of numbers,find the pair which has the least LCM(Lowest Common Multiple)

I used this approach.
Found all possible nC2 pairs possible for n numbers.
Then individually found thier LCM by computing their GCD and dividing the product of the two numbers by thier GCD.
Also maintained a variable which contained the least LCM value computed till then and finally output it.
But this naive approach seems inefficient when the number values are very large (~10^9) since time complexity of GCD will depend on the magnitude of the number. Also it will be infeasible for very large values of N.
Is there any other better approach to this problem?
For a large number of digits, an efficient implementation of the Euclidean algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_algorithm#Algorithmic_efficiency) for finding the GCD is the best route I can think of. There is no fast, general algorithm for prime factorization so using that to reduce the problem won't help the run time. I'm not aware of any fast reductions that would help with this.
Addressing large N, I think this is what others have been getting at:
Sort the array
Start with lowest values and calculate LCMs (using the Euclidean algorithm for example for the GCD part) with a short circuit: stop processing once the LCM of the remaining pairs cannot be less than the best found so far. Note that, for two numbers in the sorted set, b < c,the lower bound of the LCM is (b * c) / b = c (this occurs when b divides c). See working code below (short_lcm version).
There are other optimizations that can be made to this (such as not writing it in python :) ) but this demonstrates the algorithm improvement:
import fractions
def lcm(a, b):
return abs(a * b) / fractions.gcd(a, b)
def short_lcm(a):
a = sorted(a)
iterations = 0
cur_lcm = lcm(a[0], a[1])
first = a[0]
second = a[1]
for i in range(0, len(a)):
#Best case for remaining pairs
if i < len(a) - 1 and a[i + 1] >= cur_lcm: break
for j in range(i + 1, len(a)): #Starting at i + 1 avoids duplicates
if a[j] >= cur_lcm: break #Best case for remaining pairs
iterations += 1
test = lcm(a[i], a[j])
if test < cur_lcm:
cur_lcm = test
first = a[i]
second = a[j]
if iterations < 1: iterations = 1
print("Lowest LCM pair is (%d, %d): %d. Found in %d iterations" % (
first, second, cur_lcm, iterations))
def long_lcm(a):
iterations = 0
cur_lcm = lcm(a[0], a[1])
first = a[0]
second = a[1]
for i in range(0, len(a)):
for j in range(i + 1, len(a)): #Starting at i + 1 avoids duplicates
iterations += 1
test = lcm(a[i], a[j])
if test < cur_lcm:
cur_lcm = test
first = a[i]
second = a[j]
print("Lowest LCM pair is (%d, %d): %d. Found in %d iterations" % (
first, second, cur_lcm, iterations))
if __name__ == '__main__':
from random import randint
import time
a = [randint(1, 1000) for r in xrange(100)]
#Only print the list if it's relatively short
if len(a) < 20: print a
#Try all pairs
start = time.clock()
long_lcm(a)
print "Slow version time: %f\n" % (time.clock() - start)
start = time.clock()
short_lcm(a)
print "Fast version time: %f" % (time.clock() - start)
I don't think there is an efficient algorithm for this.
You can always use heuristics and simple which will definitely work for this problem.
On average, for most arrays, the pair of numbers will be like a,b(a<b) where LCM(a,b) ~ O(b), i.e. most of a's factors are contained in b and hence LCM will be approximately of O(b).
Hence on average, LCM will not be very large and similar to elements of the arrays.
So, Idea is to sort the array, and try with smaller a,b first in increasing order. And when b > lcm_so_far .
Thanks

Create a vector of N digits starting from K and with the step S?

I'm trying to create a vector of a specified size, the numbers of which would start from value K and increase/decrease with the specified step. I have to only use : operator.
Here's an example:
vector_dimension = 5;
start_value = 1;
step = 4;
last_number = ??
vector = start_value:step:(?last_number?)
% outputs: 1 5 9 13 17
The important thing is that the step can be either positive or negative.
So, basically, I just need to find the largest/smallest value of the range.
I tried doing things like this:
if (step >= 0)
vector = start_num:step:vector_dimension*step-1;
else
vector = start_num:step:(vector_dimension/step)+vector_dimension+1;
end
but this doesn't work correctly for far too many cases.
Does anybody have any ideas on how to implement that?
vector = start_value + (0:vector_dimension-1)*step
Basically everything relies on the following formula. If the step S, the start value s and the number of points n are known, you can evaluate the step S as:
S=(f-s)/(n-1)
where f is the last number (unknown).
By inverting such formula you find f as:
f=S*(n-1)+s
in your case f=4*(5-1)+1=17.
Once f is known you can apply the usual syntax vector=s:S:f.

How does this Codechef Factorial Solution in C work?

I'm trying to understand how this code:
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int j,p,k;
long long int n,i;
scanf("%lld",&n);
for(k=n;k>=1;k--)
{
p=0;
scanf("%lld",&i);
for (j=5;j<=i;j*=5)
{
p=p+i/j;
}
printf("%d\n",p);
}
return 0;
}
solves this Codechef problem: http://www.codechef.com/problems/FCTRL
What I'm having troubles understanding is how this loop works:
for (j=5;j<=i;j*=5)
{
p=p+i/j;
}
Why is the j variable set to 5 and could someone walk me trough this loop if I would give the value of 60 to the i variable?
Thanks so much!
In short the problem is to find the number of zeroes of a factorial of number between 1 to 1000000000.
Now take a pencil and a paper. Start with 1. From 1 to 4 there is no 0. First 0 occurs at 5!. The next is at 10! and then at 15!, 20!, ...... This means that number of zeroes increases at the interval of 5.
Coming to the loop
for (j=5;j<=i;j*=5)
{
p=p+i/j;
}
See the i is stand for N here (see the question). Since number of zeroes increases at the interval of 5, j is initialized to 5 and j will be incremented as a multiple of 5 .
Now the simple rule is that the number of trailing zeros in the decimal representation of N! is simply the multiplicity of the prime factor 5 in N!.
In the statement p=p+i/j;, same rule is followed. The author of the program incremented j by 5 till N/j >= 5 leaving N (i.e i) here as it is.
N = i = 30
p = 30/5 + 30/(5*5) = 6 // 30/25 is 1 and does not satisfying the condition N/j >= 5
This algorithm makes more sense if you understand the method they are using to find the number of trailing zeros of a factorial which is outlined in Trailing zero Factorial and in Factorials and Trailing Zeroes. Basically relies on the insight that you need to account for all the products of 5 and 2 in the factorial expansion to discover how many zeros there will be in the end.
The algorithm to finding the number of trailing zeros in x! boils down to to:
Finding successive powers of 5
Dividing x by the result add the truncated result to the total
Stop when the result of division is less than 1 or in this specific case we know this will happen when the result is greater than x
So if go back to the code we can find the following steps:
step 3
| step 1
V V
for (j=5;j<=i;j*=5)
{
p=p+i/j; // step 2
}
This piece of code:
p=0;
scanf("%lld",&i);
for (j=5;j<=i;j*=5)
{
p=p+i/j;
}
counts the number of factor 5 in all the integers in [1, i] and stores the result in p.
Loop 1: j=5, p+=i/5 counts numbers that are divisible by 5 in the range [1, i]
Loop 2: j=25, p+=i/25 counts numbers that are divisible by 25 in the range [1, i] (notice that such numbers have been already counted once in loop 1)
Loop 3: j=125, p+=i/125 counts numbers that are divisible by 125 in the range [1, i] (notice that such numbers have been already counted twice in loop 1 and 2)
....

Divide times in two boxes and find the minimum difference

Started to learn recursion and I am stuck with this simple problem. I believe that there are more optimized ways to do this but first I'm trying to learn the bruteforce approach.
I have bag A and bag B and have n items each one with some time (a float with two decimal places). The idea is to distribute the items by the two bags and obtain the minimum difference in the two bags. The idea is to try all possible outcomes.
I thought only in one bag (lets say bag A) since the other bag will contain all the items that are not in the bag A and therefore the difference will be the absolute value of total times sum - 2 * sum of the items time that are in the bag A.
I'm calling my recursive function like this:
min = total_time;
recursive(0, items_number - 1, 0);
And the code for the function is this:
void recursive(int index, int step, float sum) {
sum += items_time[index];
float difference = fabs(total_time - 2 * sum);
if (min > difference) {
min = difference;
}
if (!(min == 0.00 || step == 1 || sum > middle_time)) {
int i;
for (i = 0; i < items_number; i++) {
if (i != index) {
recursive(i, step - 1, sum);
}
}
}
}
Imagine I have 4 items with the times 1.23, 2.17 , 2.95 , 2.31
I'm getting the result 0.30. I believe that this is the correct result but I'm almost certain that if it is is pure change because If I try with bigger cases the program stops after a while. Probably because the recursion tree gets to bigger.
Can someone point me in some direction?
Okay, after the clarification, let me (hopefully) point you to a direction:
Let's assume that you know what n is, mentioned in n items. In your example, it was 2n is 4, making n = 2. Let's pick another n, let it be 3 this time, and our times shall be:
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
Now, we can already tell what the answer is; what you had said is all correct, optimally each of the bags will have their n = 3 times summed up to middle_time, which is 21 / 2 = 10.5 in this case. Since integers may never sum up to numbers with decimal points, 10.5 : 10.5 may never be achieved in this example, but 10 : 11 can, and you can have 10 through 6.00 + 3.00 + 1.00 (3 elements), so... yeah, the answer is simply 1.
How would you let a computer calculate it? Well; recall what I said at the beginning:
Let us assume that you know what n is.
In that case a naive programmer would probably simply put all those inside 2 or 3 nested for loops. 2 if he/she knew that the other half will be determined when you pick a half (by simply fixing the very first element in our group, since that element is to be included in one of the groups), like you also know; 3 if he/she didn't know that. Let's make it with 2:
...
float difference;
int i;
for ( i = 1; i < items_number; i++ ) {
sum = items_time[0] + items_time[i];
int j;
for ( j = i + 1; j < items_number; j++ ) {
sum += items_time[j];
difference = fabs( total_time - 2 * sum );
if ( min > difference ) {
min = difference;
}
}
}
...
Let me comment about the code a little for faster understanding: On the first cycle, it will add up the 0th time, the 1st time and then the 2nd time as you may see; then it will do the same check you had made (calculate the difference and compare the it with min). Let us call this the 012 group. The next group that will be checked will be 013, then 014, then 015; then 023, and so on... Each possible combination that will split the 6 into two 3s will be checked.
This operation shouldn't be any tiresome for the computer to issue. Even with this simple approach, the maximum amount of tries will be the amount of combinations of 3 you could have with 6 unique elements divided by 2. In maths, people denote this as C(6, 3), which evaluates to (6 * 5 * 4) / (3 * 2 * 1) = 20; divided by 2, so it's 10.
My guess is that the computer wouldn't make it a problem even if n was 10, making the amount of combinations as high as C(20, 10) / 2 = 92 378. It would, however, be a problem for you to write down 9 nested for loops by hand...
Anyway, the good thing is, you can recursively nest these loops. Here I will end my guidance. Since you apparently are studying for the recursion already, it wouldn't be good for me to offer a solution at this point. I can assure you that it is do-able.
Also the version I have made on my end can do it within a second for up to items_number = 22, without having made any optimizations; simply with brute force. That makes 352 716 combinations, and my machine is just a simple Windows tablet...
Your problem is called the Partition Problem. It is NP-hard and after some point, it will take a very long time to complete: the tree gets exponentially bigger as the number of cases to test grows.
The partition problem is well known and well documented over the internet. There exists some optimized solution
Your approach is not the naive brute-force approach, which would just walk through the list of items and put it into bag A and bag B recursively, chosing the case with the minimum difference, for example:
double recurse(double arr[], int n, double l, double r)
{
double ll, rr;
if (n == 0) return fabs(l - r);
ll = recurse(arr + 1, n - 1, l + *arr, r);
rr = recurse(arr + 1, n - 1, l, r + *arr);
if (ll > rr) return rr;
return ll;
}
(This code is very naive - it doesn't quite early on clearly non-optimal cases and it also wastes time by calculating every case twice with bags A and B swapped. it is brute force, however.)
You maximum recursion depth is the numer of items n, you call the recursive function 2^n - 1 times.
In your code, you can put the same item into a bag over and over:
for (i = 0; i < number_of_pizzas; i++) {
if (i != index) {
recursive(i, step - 1, sum);
}
}
This loop prevents you from treating the current item, but will happily treat items that have been put into the bag in earlier recursions for a second (or third) time. If you want to use that approach, you must keep a state of which item is in which bag.
Also, I don't understand your step. You start with step - 1 and stop recursion when step == 1. That means you are considering n - 2 items. I understand that the other items are in the other bag, but that's a weird condition that won't let you find the solution to, say, {8.0, 2.4, 2.4, 2.8}.

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