Division by zero occurred when doing combinations - c++

I'm trying to compute math combinations. The formula I'm using is N! / K! (N-K)!.
I am able to get the right answer (10) with N=5, K=2, and 120 from N=10, K=3.
BUT when I tried to test with bigger number like N=50, K=5. The integer division by zero error popped out.
I tried to define finalAns with long int but it does not work as well. Any ideas?
int N;
int init;
int K;
int factN = 1;
int factK = 1;
double finalAns;
cout << "Input of N = ";
cin >> N;
cout << "Input of K = ";
cin >> K;
int subs = N - K;
int factsubs = 1;
for (init = 1; init <= N; init++)
{
factN = factN * init;
}
for (init = 1; init <= K; init++)
{
factK = factK * init;
}
cout << "K is " << factK << endl;
for (init = 1; init <= subs; init++)
{
factsubs = factsubs * init;
}
finalAns = factN / (factK * factsubs);
cout << N << "C" << K << " is " << finalAns << endl;

You need to change the multiply-at-one-go approach.
Don't calculate N! at one go.
Use the fact that division of any two positive integers reduces the end result, so favor division to have the lower intermediate values.
Expand the expression of N!/(N-K)! * K! to accommodate as much of division operation in intermediate steps as possible to lessen the chance of overflow.
Do not go for calculation of N! or (N-K)! or K! separately, you are more likely to face the overflow problem. Instead use the fact that eventually you need to divide the big numbers, why not do it before it becomes BIG!
More hints:
N!/(N-K)! = multiply i[N..N-K+1] one by one //not i[N..1]
and, check if any factor(f) of value j from [2..K] perfectly divides the intermediate-product-value(p), if yes, do the division : p = p/f and j = j/f.

10! is very big: 3.628.800 - if this one is big, just imagine 50!
Depending on what compiler you are using, you might handle preety good 15! using long long. However that is not big enough - so you need to do something else... You can make an algorithm for multiplication that returns a character array - there is no way to return a long int or something else like that.

Related

The output of the program is always '0'?

I want to find the sum up to the 'n'th term for the following series:
(1/2)+((1*3)/(2*4))+((1*3*5)/(2*4*6))....
So, I wrote the following program in c++ :
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
#include <conio.h>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int p=1, k=1, n=0;
float h=0;
cout<<"Enter the term: ";
cin>>n;
for(int i=1; i<=n; i++)
{
for(int j=1; j<=i; j++)
{
p*=((2*j)-1);
k*=(2*j);
}
h+=(p/k);
p=1;
k=1;
}
cout<<"The sum is : "<<h;
return 0;
getch();
}
However, the output of the program always gives me '0'. I can't figure out the problem with the program.
N.B. I'm new to programming.
The problem here is that you haven't declared p and k as float or doubleor explicitly cast them as such before the calculation and assignment to h.
What's happening is for every iteration of the loop p < k (by nature of the problem) since p and k are both declared as int, p / k = 0. So you're just summing 0 for every iteration.
Either declare p and k as float or double or do this:
h += ((float) p) / ((float) k)
Also, for this specific problem I assume you're looking for precision, so be wary and look into that as well Should I use double or float?
implicit conversion and type casting are a trap where all newbies fall.
in the instruction:
h += p/k;
the compiler performs an integer division first, then a promotion of the result to floating point type.
and since:
p < k ; for all i,j < n
then:
res = (p / k) < 1 => truncates to 0; // by integer division
thus:
sum(1->n) of p/k = sum (1->n) 0 = 0;
finally:
h = conversion to float of (0) = 0.0f;
that's why you have the result of 0.0f at the end.
the solution:
1- first of all you need to use the natural type for floating point of c++ which is "double" (under the hood c++ promotes float to double, so use it directly).
2- declare all your variable as double, except the number of terms n:
3- the number of terms is never negative, you need to express that in your code by declaring it as an unsigned int.
4- if you do step 3, make sure to catch overflow errors, that is if the user enters a negative number your risk to have a very big number in "n", expel : n =-1 converts to 0xffffffff positive number.
5- engineer your code sometimes is better.
6- include only the headers that you need, and avoid a importing any namespace in your global namespace.
here is how i think you should write your program.
#include <iostream>
double sum_serie(unsigned int n)
{
double prod = 1.0, sum = 0.0;
for (double c=1; c<=n ; c++)
{
prod *= ( ( 2*c ) - 1 ) / ( 2*c ); // remark the parenthesis
sum += prod;
}
return sum;
}
int main()
{
unsigned int n = 0;
int temp = 0;
std::cout << " enter the number of terms n: ";
std::cin >> temp;
if (temp > 0)
n = temp; // this is how you catch overflow
else
{
std::cout << " n < 0, no result calculated " << std::endl;
return 0;
}
std::cout << " the result is sum = " << sum_serie(n) << std::endl;
return 0;
}
I know that the question was about the implicit conversion and casting in C++, but even the way of writing a code can show you what bugs you have in it, so try to learn a proper way of expressing your ideas into code, debugging comes natural afterward.
Good Luck

Floating point error in C++ code

I am trying to solve a question in which i need to find out the number of possible ways to make a team of two members.(note: a team can have at most two person)
After making this code, It works properly but in some test cases it shows floating point error ad i can't find out what it is exactly.
Input: 1st line : Number of test cases
2nd line: number of total person
Thank you
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
long C(long n, long r)
{
long f[n + 1];
f[0] = 1;
for (long i = 1; i <= n; i++)
{
f[i] = i * f[i - 1];
}
return f[n] / f[r] / f[n - r];
}
int main()
{
long n, r, m,t;
cin>>t;
while(t--)
{
cin>>n;
r=1;
cout<<C(n, min(r, n - r))+1<<endl;
}
return 0;
}
You aren't getting a floating point exception. You are getting a divide by zero exception. Because your code is attempting to divide by the number 0 (which can't be done on a computer).
When you invoke C(100, 1) the main loop that initializes the f array inside C increases exponentially. Eventually, two values are multiplied such that i * f[i-1] is zero due to overflow. That leads to all the subsequent f[i] values being initialized to zero. And then the division that follows the loop is a division by zero.
Although purists on these forums will say this is undefined, here's what's really happening on most 2's complement architectures. Or at least on my computer....
At i==21:
f[20] is already equal to 2432902008176640000
21 * 2432902008176640000 overflows for 64-bit signed, and will typically become -4249290049419214848 So at this point, your program is bugged and is now in undefined behavior.
At i==66
f[65] is equal to 0x8000000000000000. So 66 * f[65] gets calculated as zero for reasons that make sense to me, but should be understood as undefined behavior.
With f[66] assigned to 0, all subsequent assignments of f[i] become zero as well. After the main loop inside C is over, the f[n-r] is zero. Hence, divide by zero error.
Update
I went back and reverse engineered your problem. It seems like your C function is just trying to compute this expression:
N!
-------------
R! * (N-R)!
Which is the "number of unique sorted combinations"
In which case instead of computing the large factorial of N!, we can reduce that expression to this:
n
[ ∏ i ]
n-r
--------------------
R!
This won't eliminate overflow, but will allow your C function to be able to take on larger values of N and R to compute the number of combinations without error.
But we can also take advantage of simple reduction before trying to do a big long factorial expression
For example, let's say we were trying to compute C(15,5). Mathematically that is:
15!
--------
10! 5!
Or as we expressed above:
1*2*3*4*5*6*7*8*9*10*11*12*13*14*15
-----------------------------------
1*2*3*4*5*6*7*8*9*10 * 1*2*3*4*5
The first 10 factors of the numerator and denominator cancel each other out:
11*12*13*14*15
-----------------------------------
1*2*3*4*5
But intuitively, you can see that "12" in the numerator is already evenly divisible by denominators 2 and 3. And that 15 in the numerator is evenly divisible by 5 in the denominator. So simple reduction can be applied:
11*2*13*14*3
-----------------------------------
1 * 4
There's even more room for greatest common divisor reduction, but this is a great start.
Let's start with a helper function that computes the product of all the values in a list.
long long multiply_vector(std::vector<int>& values)
{
long long result = 1;
for (long i : values)
{
result = result * i;
if (result < 0)
{
std::cout << "ERROR - multiply_range hit overflow" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
}
return result;
}
Not let's implement C as using the above function after doing the reduction operation
long long C(int n, int r)
{
if ((r >= n) || (n < 0) || (r < 0))
{
std::cout << "invalid parameters passed to C" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
// compute
// n!
// -------------
// r! * (n-r)!
//
// assume (r < n)
// Which maps to
// n
// [∏ i]
// n - r
// --------------------
// R!
int end = n;
int start = n - r + 1;
std::vector<int> numerators;
std::vector<int> denominators;
long long numerator = 1;
long long denominator = 1;
for (int i = start; i <= end; i++)
{
numerators.push_back(i);
}
for (int i = 2; i <= r; i++)
{
denominators.push_back(i);
}
size_t n_length = numerators.size();
size_t d_length = denominators.size();
for (size_t n = 0; n < n_length; n++)
{
int nval = numerators[n];
for (size_t d = 0; d < d_length; d++)
{
int dval = denominators[d];
if ((nval % dval) == 0)
{
denominators[d] = 1;
numerators[n] = nval / dval;
}
}
}
numerator = multiply_vector(numerators);
denominator = multiply_vector(denominators);
if ((numerator == 0) || (denominator == 0))
{
std::cout << "Giving up. Can't resolve overflow" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
long long result = numerator / denominator;
return result;
}
You are not using floating-point. And you seem to be using variable sized arrays, which is a C feature and possibly a C++ extension but not standard.
Anyway, you will get overflow and therefore undefined behaviour even for rather small values of n.
In practice the overflow will lead to array elements becoming zero for not much larger values of n.
Your code will then divide by zero and crash.
They also might have a test case like (1000000000, 999999999) which is trivial to solve, but not for your code which I bet will crash.
You don't specify what you mean by "floating point error" - I reckon you are referring to the fact that you are doing an integer division rather than a floating point one so that you will always get integers rather than floats.
int a, b;
a = 7;
b = 2;
std::cout << a / b << std::endl;
this will result in 3, not 3.5! If you want floating point result you should use floats instead like this:
float a, b;
a = 7;
b = 2;
std::cout << a / b << std::end;
So the solution to your problem would simply be to use float instead of long long int.
Note also that you are using variable sized arrays which won't work in C++ - why not use std::vector instead??
Array syntax as:
type name[size]
Note: size must a constant not a variable
Example #1:
int name[10];
Example #2:
const int asize = 10;
int name[asize];

Determining the largest value before hitting infinity

I have this very simple function that checks the value of (N^N-1)^(N-2):
int main() {
// Declare Variables
double n;
double answer;
// Function
cout << "Please enter a double number >= 3: ";
cin >> n;
answer = pow(n,(n-1)*(n-2));
cout << "n to the n-1) to the n-2 for doubles is " << answer << endl;
}
Based on this formula, it is evident it will reach to infinity, but I am curious until what number/value of n would it hit infinity? Using a loop seems extremely inefficient, but that's all I can think of. Basically, creating a loop that says let n be a number between 1 - 100, iterate until n == inf
Is there a more efficient approach to this problem?
I think you are approaching this the wrong way.
Let : F(N) be the function (N^(N-1))(N-2)
Now you actually know whats the largest number that could be stored in a double type variable
is 0x 7ff0 0000 0000 0000 Double Precision
So now you have F(N) = max_double
just solve for X now.
Does this answer your question?
Two things: the first is that (N^(N-1))^(N-2)) can be written as N^((N-1)*(N-2)). So this would remove one pow call making your code faster.
pow(n, (n-1)*(n-2));
The second is that to know what practical limits you hit, testing all N will literally take a fraction of a second, so there really is no reason to find another practical way.
You could compute it by hand knowing variable size limits and all, but testing it is definitely faster. An example for code (C++11, since I use std::isinf):
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
#include <iomanip>
int main() {
double N = 1.0, diff = 10.0;
const unsigned digits = 10;
unsigned counter = digits;
while ( true ) {
double X = std::pow( N, (N-1.0) * (N-2.0) );
if ( std::isinf(X) ) {
--counter;
if ( !counter ) {
std::cout << std::setprecision(digits) << N << "\n";
break;
}
N -= diff;
diff /= 10;
}
N += diff;
}
return 0;
}
This example takes less than a millisecond on my computer, and prints 17.28894235

Problems with cout ( C++)

I am having the hardest time figuring out what is wrong here:
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
#include <iomanip>
using namespace std;
double fact(double);
double sinTaylor(double);
double cosTaylor(double);
int main()
{
double number, sineOfnumber, cosineOfnumber;
cout << "Enter a number, then I will calculate the sine and cosine of this number" << endl;
cin >> number;
sineOfnumber = sinTaylor(number);
cosineOfnumber = cosTaylor(number);
cout << fixed << endl;
cout << cosineOfnumber << endl;
cout << sineOfnumber << endl;
return 0;
}
double fact(double n)
{
double product = 1;
while(n > 1)
product *= n--;
return product;
}
double sinTaylor(double x)
{
double currentIteration, sumSine;
for(double n = 0; n < 5; n++)
{
currentIteration = pow(-1, n)*pow(x, 2*n+1) / fact(2*n+1);
sumSine += currentIteration;
}
return sumSine;
}
double cosTaylor(double y)
{
double currentIteration, sumCosine;
for(double n = 0; n < 5; n++)
{
double currentIteration = pow(-1, n)*pow(y, 2*n) / fact(2*n);
sumCosine += currentIteration;
}
return sumCosine;
}
Ok, so here's my code. I'm pretty content with it. Except for one thing:
sineOfnumber and cosOfnumber, after the calling of sinTaylor and cosTaylor, will add each other in the following cout line that will print each other.
In other words, if number is equal to lets say, .7853, 1.14 will be printed in the line that is intended to print cosineOfnumber, and sineOfnumber will print the result normally.
Can anyone help me identify why this is? Thank you so much!
Are you ever initializing the variables sumSine and sumCosine in your functions? They're not guaranteed to start at zero, so when you call += inside your loop you could be adding computed values to garbage.
Try initializing those two variables to zero and see what happens, as other than that the code seems okay.
The series for the sine is (sorry for the LaTeX):
sin(x) = \sum_{n \ge 0} \frac{x^{2 n + 1}}{(2 n + 1)!}
If you look, given term t_{2 n + 1} you can compute term t_{2 n + 3} as
t_{2 n + 3} = t_{2 n + 1} * \frac{x^2}{(2 n + 2)(2 n + 3)}
So, given a term you can compute the next one easily. If you look at the series for the cosine, it is similar. The resulting program is more efficient (no recomputing factorials) and might be more precise. When adding up floating point numbers, it is more precise to add them from smallest to largest, but I doubt that will make a difference here.

automatic rounding off a during typecasting in c++

I did something like this
long double n;
cin >> n;
n = n * 10000;
long long int temp = (long long) n;
now when i try to print temp, then a problem occours in some test cases like 2.36
for 2.36 the value of temp should be 23600 but the value of temp comes out to be 23599
Pls someone help me out with this already got 4 wrong ans for this.. small problem
for simplification ..
my code goes like this
int main()
{
int t;
for(scanf("%d", &t); t-- ;) {
float n;
scanf("%f", &n);
n *= 10000;
long int as = (long int) n;
cout << "\nas : " << as << " n : " << n << endl;
long a, b;
a = as;
b = 10000;
while(a%b != 0) {
long temp = a % b;
a = b;
b = temp;
}
long factor = b;
cout << (10000/factor) << endl;
}
return 0;
}
the aim of this program was something that .. i was given a number that can have at max 4 places after the decimal. that was the average score scored by a batsman so we had to find the minimum number of matches he should play to get that score
This is because of the way floating-points are represented internally. You should round them off before performing truncation.
Doing a floor(n+0.5) or a ceil(x-0.5) would round the number correctly.
EDIT:
As your truncation step is a floor(..) operation in itself, you should just do n = n * 10000 + 0.5 as #Mooing Duck stated.
(Example)