advice on how to make my algorithm faster - c

here is my code in C for problem#3 from project-Euler, where I have to find the largest prime factor of 600851475143.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
bool is_prime(long int number){
long int j;
for (j=2; j<=number/2; j++){
if (number%j==0) return false;
if (j==number/2) return true;
}
}
int main(){
long int input;
scanf("%d", &input);
long int factor;
int ans=0;
for (factor=input/2; factor>1; factor--){
if (input%factor==0 && is_prime(factor)) {
ans = factor;
break;
}
}
printf("%d\n", ans);
system("pause");
return 0;
}
Although it works fine for small numbers, gradually it takes more and more time for it to give an answer. And, finally, for 600851475143 the code returns 0, which is obviously wrong.
Could anyone help?
thanks a lot.

A few things to consider:
As #Alex Reynolds pointed out, the number you're trying to factor might be so large that it can't fit in an int. You may need to use a long or a uint64_t to store the number. That alone might solve the problem.
Rather than checking each divisor and seeing which ones are prime, you might instead want to try this approach: set n to 600851475143. For each integer from 2 upward, try dividing n by that integer. If it cleanly divides out, then divide out all copies of that number from n and record the largest prime factor as being the current integer. If you think about it a bit, you'll notice that the only divisors you'll consider this way are prime numbers. As a helpful hint - if n has no divisors (other than 1) less than √n, then it's prime. That might help give you an upper bound on your search space that's much tighter than the division by two trick you're using.
Rather than increasing the divisor by one, try testing out 2 as a divisor and then only dividing by odd numbers (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.) No even number other than 2 is prime, so this halves the number of numbers you need to divide by.
Alternatively, create a file storing all prime numbers up to √600851475143 by downloading a list of primes from the internet, then just test each one to see if any of them divide 600851475143 and take the biggest. :-)
Hope this helps!

I suggest you to improve the primality check part of your code. The running time of your method is O(n2) so you should use a more efficient algorithm for this like the well-known Miller–Rabin primality test with O(klog3n).
I provide a pseudo code here for you and you can write the code on your own:
Input: n > 3, an odd integer to be tested for primality;
Input: k, a parameter that determines the accuracy of the test
Output: composite if n is composite, otherwise probably prime
write n − 1 as 2s·d with d odd by factoring powers of 2 from n − 1
WitnessLoop: repeat k times:
pick a random integer a in the range [2, n − 2]
x ← ad mod n
if x = 1 or x = n − 1 then do next WitnessLoop
repeat s − 1 times:
x ← x2 mod n
if x = 1 then return composite
if x = n − 1 then do next WitnessLoop
return composite
return probably prime
I provide a link for you to see an implementation in python that also compares this algorithm with yours. BTW, there are many implementations of this algorithm all over the web but I think righting it by yourself may help you to better understand it.

Try the following code. It essentially implements the points in the accepted answer. The only improvement is that it skips all multiples of 2, 3, and 5 using wheel factorization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_factorization
//find largest prime factor for x <2^64
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
int main() {
uint64_t x = 600851475143;
int wheel[] = {4,2,4,2,4,6,2,6};
while(x>2 && x%2==0) x/=2;
while(x>3 && x%3==0) x/=3;
while(x>5 && x%5==0) x/=5;
for(uint64_t j=0, i=7; i<=x/i; i+=wheel[j++], j%=8) {
while(x>i && x%i==0) x/=i;
}
printf("%llu\n", x);
}
Another thing that could be done is to pre-compute all primes less than 2^32 (rather than downloading them) and then only divide by the primes. The fastest method I know to do this is the Sieve of Eratosthenes. Here is a version using OpenMP which finds the primes up to 1 billion in less than one second http://create.stephan-brumme.com/eratosthenes/

Related

Given a range find the sum of number that is divisible by 3 or 5

The below code that works perfectly fine for smaller digits, But Time dilation for greater digits
given me the suggestion
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int num;
int sum=0;
scanf("%d",&num);
for(int i=1;i<=num;i++)
{
if(i%3==0 || i%5==0)
sum += i;
}
printf("%d",sum);
}
Need efficient code for this
Try to reduce the time take for the code.
The answer can be computed with simple arithmetic without any iteration. Many Project Euler questions are intended to make you think about clever ways to find solutions without just using the raw power of computers to chug through calculations. (This was Project Euler question 1, except the Project Euler problem specifies the limit using less than instead of less than or equal to.)
Given positive integers N and F, the number of positive multiples of F that are less than or equal to N is ⌊N/F⌋. (⌊x⌋ is the greatest integer not greater than x.) For example, the number of multiples of 5 less than or equal to 999 is ⌊999/5⌋ = ⌊199.8⌋ = 199.
Let n be this number of multiples, ⌊N/F⌋.
The first multiple is F and the last multiple is n•F. For example, with 1000 and 5, the first multiple is 5 and the last multiple is 200•5 = 1000.
The multiples are evenly spaced, so the average of all of them equals the average of the first and the last, so it is (F + nF)/2.
The total of the multiples equals their average multiplied by the number of them, so the total of the multiples of F less than N is n • (F + n•F)/2.
Adding the sum of multiples of 3 and the sum of multiples of 5 includes the multiples of both 3 and 5 twice. We can correct for this by subtracting the sum of those numbers. Multiples of both 3 and 5 are multiples of 15.
Thus, we can compute the requested sum using simple arithmetic without any iteration:
#include <stdio.h>
static long SumOfMultiples(long N, long F)
{
long NumberOfMultiples = N / F;
long FirstMultiple = F;
long LastMultiple = NumberOfMultiples * F;
return NumberOfMultiples * (FirstMultiple + LastMultiple) / 2;
}
int main(void)
{
long N = 1000;
long Sum = SumOfMultiples(N, 3) + SumOfMultiples(N, 5) - SumOfMultiples(N, 3*5);
printf("%ld\n", Sum);
}
As you do other Project Euler questions, you should look for similar ideas.

What is an efficient algorithm to find all the factors of an integer?

I was writing a very simple program to examine if a number could divide another number evenly:
// use the divider squared to reduce iterations
for(divider = 2; (divider * divider) <= number; divider++)
if(number % divider == 0)
print("%d can divided by %d\n", number, divider);
Now I was curious if the task could be done by finding the square root of number and compare it to divider. However, it seems that sqrt() isn't really able to boost the efficiency. How was sqrt() handled in C and how can I boost the efficiency of sqrt()? Also, is there any other way to approach the answer with even greater efficiency?
Also, the
number % divider == 0
is used to test if divider could evenly divide number, is there also a more efficient way to do the test besides using %?
I'm not going to address what the best algorithm to find all factors of an integer is. Instead I would like to comment on your current method.
There are thee conditional tests cases to consider
(divider * divider) <= number
divider <= number/divider
divider <= sqrt(number)
See Conditional tests in primality by trial division for more detials.
The case to use depends on your goals and hardware.
The advantage of case 1 is that it does not require a division. However, it can overflow when divider*divider is larger than the largest integer. Case two does not have the overflow problem but it requires a division. For case3 the sqrt only needs to be calculated once but it requires that the sqrt function get perfect squares correct.
But there is something else to consider many instruction sets, including the x86 instruction set, return the remainder as well when doing a division. Since you're already doing number % divider this means that you get it for free when doing number / divider.
Therefore, case 1 is only useful on system where the division and remainder are not calculated in one instruction and you're not worried about overflow.
Between case 2 and case3 I think the main issue is again the instruction set. Choose case 2 if the sqrt is too slow compared to case2 or if your sqrt function does not calculate perfect squares correctly. Choose case 3 if the instruction set does not calculate the divisor and remainder in one instruction.
For the x86 instruction set case 1, case 2 and case 3 should give essentially equal performance. So there should be no reason to use case 1 (however see a subtle point below) . The C standard library guarantees that the sqrt of perfect squares are done correctly. So there is no disadvantage to case 3 either.
But there is one subtle point about case 2. I have found that some compilers don't recognize that the division and remainder are calculated together. For example in the following code
for(divider = 2; divider <= number/divider; divider++)
if(number % divider == 0)
GCC generates two division instruction even though only one is necessary. One way to fix this is to keep the division and reminder close like this
divider = 2, q = number/divider, r = number%divider
for(; divider <= q; divider++, q = number/divider, r = number%divider)
if(r == 0)
In this case GCC produces only one division instruction and case1, case 2 and case 3 have the same performance. But this code is a bit less readable than
int cut = sqrt(number);
for(divider = 2; divider <= cut; divider++)
if(number % divider == 0)
so I think overall case 3 is the best choice at least with the x86 instruction set.
However, it seems that sqrt() isn't really able to boost the efficiency
That is to be expected, as the saved multiplication per iteration is largely dominated by the much slower division operation inside the loop.
Also, the number % divider = 0 is used to test if divider could evenly divide number, is there also a more efficient way to do the test besides using %?
Not that I know of. Checking whether a % b == 0 is at least as hard as checking a % b = c for some c, because we can use the former to compute the latter (with one extra addition). And at least on Intel architectures, computing the latter is just as computationally expensive as a division, which is amongst the slowest operations in typical, modern processors.
If you want significantly better performance, you need a better factorization algorithm, of which there are plenty. One particular simple one with runtime O(n1/4) is Pollard's ρ algorithm. You can find a straightforward C++ implementation in my algorithms library. Adaption to C is left as an exercise to the reader:
int rho(int n) { // will find a factor < n, but not necessarily prime
if (~n & 1) return 2;
int c = rand() % n, x = rand() % n, y = x, d = 1;
while (d == 1) {
x = (1ll*x*x % n + c) % n;
y = (1ll*y*y % n + c) % n;
y = (1ll*y*y % n + c) % n;
d = __gcd(abs(x - y), n);
}
return d == n ? rho(n) : d;
}
void factor(int n, map<int, int>& facts) {
if (n == 1) return;
if (rabin(n)) { // simple randomized prime test (e.g. Miller–Rabin)
// we found a prime factor
facts[n]++;
return;
}
int f = rho(n);
factor(n/f, facts);
factor(f, facts);
}
Constructing the factors of n from its prime factors is then an easy task. Just use all possible exponents for the found prime factors and combine them in each possible way.
In C, you can take square roots of floating point numbers with the sqrt() family of functions in the header <math.h>.
Taking square roots is usually slower than dividing because the algorithm to take square roots is more complicated than the division algorithm. This is not a property of the C language but of the hardware that executes your program. On modern processors, taking square roots can be just as fast as dividing. This holds, for example, on the Haswell microarchitecture.
However, if the algorithmic improvements are good, the slightly slower speed of a sqrt() call usually doesn't matter.
To only compare up to the square root of number, employ code like this:
#include <math.h>
/* ... */
int root = (int)sqrt((double)number);
for(divider = 2; divider <= root; divider++)
if(number % divider = 0)
print("%d can divided by %d\n", number, divider);
This is just my random thought, so please comment and critisize it if it's wrong.
The idea is to precompute all the prime numbers below a certain range and use it as a table.
Looping though the table, check if the prime number is a factor, if it is, then increament the counter for that prime number, if not then increment the index. Terminate when the index reaches the end or the prime number to check exceeds the input.
At end, the result is a table of all the prime factors of the input, and their counts. Then generating all natual factors should be trival, isn't it?
Worst case, the loop needs to go to the end, then it takes 6542 iterations.
Considering the input is [0, 4294967296] this is similar to O(n^3/8).
Here's MATLAB code that implements this method:
if p is generated by p=primes(65536); this method would work for all inputs between [0, 4294967296] (but not tested).
function [ output_non_zero ] = fact2(input, p)
output_table=zeros(size(p));
i=1;
while(i<length(p));
if(input<1.5)
break;
% break condition: input is divided to 1,
% all prime factors are found.
end
if(rem(input,p(i))<1)
% if dividable, increament counter and don't increament index
% keep checking until not dividable
output_table(i)=output_table(i)+1;
input = input/p(i);
else
% not dividable, try next
i=i+1;
end
end
% remove all zeros, should be handled more efficiently
output_non_zero = [p(output_table~=0);...
output_table(output_table~=0)];
if(input > 1.5)
% the last and largest prime factor could be larger than 65536
% hence would skip from the table, add it to the end of output
% if exists
output_non_zero = [output_non_zero,[input;1]];
end
end
test
p=primes(65536);
t = floor(rand()*4294967296);
b = fact2(t, p);
% check if all prime factors adds up and they are all primes
assert((prod(b(1,:).^b(2,:))==t)&&all(isprime(b(1,:))), 'test failed');

Project Euler #179

Problem: Find the number of integers 1 < n < 10^7, for which n and n + 1 have the same number of positive divisors. For example, 14 has the positive divisors 1, 2, 7, 14 while 15 has 1, 3, 5, 15.
I can't reach 10^7 because it is too big number for C and me. How can i solve this problem in C?
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>
int divisorcount(int);
int main()
{
int number,divisornumber1,divisornumber2,j=0;
for(number=1;number<=100;number++){
divisornumber1=divisorcount(number);
divisornumber2=divisorcount(number-1);
if(divisornumber1==divisornumber2){
printf("%d and %d\n",number-1,number);
j++;
}
}
printf("\nThere is %d integers.",j);
getch();
}
int divisorcount(int num)
{
int i,divi=0;
for(i=1;i<=(num)/2;i++)
if(num%i==0)
divi++;
return divi;
}
As a hint to how to solve the problem within a minute, you can go through each number from 2 to 10^7, loop through all multiples of the those numbers and increment by 1 (1 is ignored, since all numbers are multiple of 1). In the end, you will get the number of divisors of each of the numbers in the array (check whether your compiler support 32-bit index). Just use a final linear scan to count.
Ever tried long long num = 100000000LL;? C isn't smart enough to conclude the type on the right side from the left long long so you have to add the LL. With this approach you should be able to handle larger numbers than normal integers, just change your functions and variables in a suitable way.
A long long is always at least 2^64 bit in size which you can check on Wikipedia.
Hint: As someone mentioned in the comments, Project Euler is not about bruteforcing. This is a lame approach. Think about some better strategies. You might want to get help at math.stackexchange?
EDIT: I don't know why I thought, that a uint32_t is not enough for 10^7 - sorry for that mistake.
To expand on nhahtdh's idea, to make it even faster (at cost of making it more complicated), make a prime number sieve calculating the prime numbers up to sqrt(10^7) = about 3170. Then the exponents of prime factors determine the number of multiples so that the product of (exp+1) is the number of integers dividing the number. So you can set an array to ones, then loop over each prime, multiplying with that primes exponent contribution (plus one) for each position it multiplies.

Does "n * (rand() / RAND_MAX)" make a skewed random number distribution?

I'd like to find an unskewed way of getting random numbers in C (although at most I'm going to be using it for values of 0-20, and more likely only 0-8). I've seen this formula but after running some tests I'm not sure if it's skewed or not. Any help?
Here is the full function used:
int randNum()
{
return 1 + (int) (10.0 * (rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1.0)));
}
I seeded it using:
unsigned int iseed = (unsigned int)time(NULL);
srand (iseed);
The one suggested below refuses to work for me I tried
int greek;
for (j=0; j<50000; j++)
{
greek =rand_lim(5);
printf("%d, " greek);
greek =(int) (NUM * (rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1.0)));
int togo=number[greek];
number[greek]=togo+1;
}
and it stops working and gives me the same number 50000 times when I comment out printf.
Yes, it's skewed, unless your RAND_MAX happens to be a multiple of 10.
If you take the numbers from 0 to RAND_MAX, and try to divide them into 10 piles, you really have only three possibilities:
RAND_MAX is a multiple of 10, and the piles come out even.
RAND_MAX is not a multiple of 10, and the piles come out uneven.
You split it into uneven groups to start with, but throw away all the "extras" that would make it uneven.
You rarely have control over RAND_MAX, and it's often a prime number anyway. That really only leaves 2 and 3 as possibilities.
The third option looks roughly like this:
[Edit: After some thought, I've revised this to produce numbers in the range 0...(limit-1), to fit with the way most things in C and C++ work. This also simplifies the code (a tiny bit).
int rand_lim(int limit) {
/* return a random number in the range [0..limit)
*/
int divisor = RAND_MAX/limit;
int retval;
do {
retval = rand() / divisor;
} while (retval == limit);
return retval;
}
For anybody who questions whether this method might leave some skew, I also wrote a rather different version, purely for testing. This one uses a decidedly non-random generator with a very limited range, so we can simply iterate through every number in the range. It looks like this:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#define MAX 1009
int next_val() {
// just return consecutive numbers
static int v=0;
return v++;
}
int lim(int limit) {
int divisor = MAX/limit;
int retval;
do {
retval = next_val() / divisor;
} while (retval == limit);
return retval;
}
#define LIMIT 10
int main() {
// we'll allocate extra space at the end of the array:
int buckets[LIMIT+2] = {0};
int i;
for (i=0; i<MAX; i++)
++buckets[lim(LIMIT)];
// and print one beyond what *should* be generated
for (i=0; i<LIMIT+1; i++)
printf("%2d: %d\n", i, buckets[i]);
}
So, we're starting with numbers from 0 to 1009 (1009 is prime, so it won't be an exact multiple of any range we choose). So, we're starting with 1009 numbers, and splitting it into 10 buckets. That should give 100 in each bucket, and the 9 leftovers (so to speak) get "eaten" by the do/while loop. As it's written right now, it allocates and prints out an extra bucket. When I run it, I get exactly 100 in each of buckets 0..9, and 0 in bucket 10. If I comment out the do/while loop, I see 100 in each of 0..9, and 9 in bucket 10.
Just to be sure, I've re-run the test with various other numbers for both the range produced (mostly used prime numbers), and the number of buckets. So far, I haven't been able to get it to produce skewed results for any range (as long as the do/while loop is enabled, of course).
One other detail: there is a reason I used division instead of remainder in this algorithm. With a good (or even decent) implementation of rand() it's irrelevant, but when you clamp numbers to a range using division, you keep the upper bits of the input. When you do it with remainder, you keep the lower bits of the input. As it happens, with a typical linear congruential pseudo-random number generator, the lower bits tend to be less random than the upper bits. A reasonable implementation will throw out a number of the least significant bits already, rendering this irrelevant. On the other hand, there are some pretty poor implementations of rand around, and with most of them, you end up with better quality of output by using division rather than remainder.
I should also point out that there are generators that do roughly the opposite -- the lower bits are more random than the upper bits. At least in my experience, these are quite uncommon. That with which the upper bits are more random are considerably more common.

What is the time complexity of this multiplication algorithm?

For the classic interview question "How do you perform integer multiplication without the multiplication operator?", the easiest answer is, of course, the following linear-time algorithm in C:
int mult(int multiplicand, int multiplier)
{
for (int i = 1; i < multiplier; i++)
{
multiplicand += multiplicand;
}
return multiplicand;
}
Of course, there is a faster algorithm. If we take advantage of the property that bit shifting to the left is equivalent to multiplying by 2 to the power of the number of bits shifted, we can bit-shift up to the nearest power of 2, and use our previous algorithm to add up from there. So, our code would now look something like this:
#include <math.h>
int log2( double n )
{
return log(n) / log(2);
}
int mult(int multiplicand, int multiplier)
{
int nearest_power = 2 ^ (floor(log2(multiplier)));
multiplicand << nearest_power;
for (int i = nearest_power; i < multiplier; i++)
{
multiplicand += multiplicand;
}
return multiplicand;
}
I'm having trouble determining what the time complexity of this algorithm is. I don't believe that O(n - 2^(floor(log2(n)))) is the correct way to express this, although (I think?) it's technically correct. Can anyone provide some insight on this?
mulitplier - nearest_power can be as large as half of multiplier, and as it tends towards infinity the constant 0.5 there doesn't matter (not to mention we get rid of constants in Big O). The loop is therefore O(multiplier). I'm not sure about the bit-shifting.
Edit: I took more of a look around on the bit-shifting. As gbulmer says, it can be O(n), where n is the number of bits shifted. However, it can also be O(1) on certain architectures. See: Is bit shifting O(1) or O(n)?
However, it doesn't matter in this case! n > log2(n) for all valid n. So we have O(n) + O(multiplier) which is a subset of O(2*multiplier) due to the aforementioned relationship, and thus the whole algorithm is O(multiplier).
The point of finding the nearest power is so that your function runtime could get close to runtime O(1). This happens when 2^nearest_power is very close to the result of your addition.
Behind the scenes the whole "to the power of 2" is done with bit shifting.
So, to answer your question, the second version of your code is still worse case linear time: O(multiplier).
Your answer, O(n - 2^(floor(log2(n)))), is also not incorrect; it's just very precise and might be hard to do in your head quickly to find the bounds.
Edit
Let's look at the second posted algorithm, starting with:
int nearest_power = 2 ^ (floor(log2(multiplier)));
I believe calculating log2, is, rather pleasingly, O(log2(multiplier))
then nearest_power gets to the interval [multiplier/2 to multiplier], the magnitude of this is multiplier/2. This is the same as finding the highest set-bit for a positive number.
So the for loop is O(multiplier/2), the constant of 1/2 comes out, so it is O(n)
On average, it is half the interval away, which would be O(multiplier/4). But that is just the constant 1/4 * n, so it is still O(n), the constant is smaller but it is still O(n).
A faster algorithm.
Our intuitiion is we can multiply by an n digit number in n steps
In binary this is using 1-bit shift, 1-bit test and binary add to construct the whole answer. Each of those operations is O(1). This is long-multiplication, one digit at a time.
If we use O(1) operations for n, an x bit number, it is O(log2(n)) or O(x), where x is the number of bits in the number
This is an O(log2(n)) algorithm:
int mult(int multiplicand, int multiplier) {
int product = 0;
while (multiplier) {
if (multiplier & 1) product += multiplicand;
multiplicand <<= 1;
multiplier >>= 1;
}
return product;
}
It is essentially how we do long multiplication.
Of course, the wise thing to do is use the smaller number as the multiplier. (I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :-)
This only works for positive values, but by testing and remembering the signs of the input, operating on positive values, and then adjusting the sign, it works for all numbers.

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