enter image description here
I have a table in OpenOffice that contains a column with region's codes (column J). Using table functions, how to get all codes that appear more than 5 times and write them in one cell?
Normally I would recommend breaking this problem down into smaller parts using helper columns. Or better yet, move the data into LibreOffice Base which can easily work with distinct values.
However, I managed to come up with a rather large formula that seems to do what you asked. Enter it as an array formula.
=TEXTJOIN(",";1;IF(COUNTIF(исходник.J$2:J$552;исходник.J2:J552)>5;IF(ROW(исходник.J2:J552)=MATCH(исходник.J2:J552;исходник.J$2:J$552;0)+ROW(J$2)-1;исходник.J2:J552;"")))
I can't test this on your actual data since your example is only an image, but let's say that there are six of both 77 and 37. Then this would show 77,37 as the result.
Here is a breakdown. Look up the functions in LibreOffice Online Help for more information.
=TEXTJOIN(",";1; — Join all results into a single cell, separated by commas.
IF(COUNTIF(исходник.J$2:J$552;исходник.J2:J552)>5; — Find codes that occur more than 5 times. This is the same as what you wrote.
IF(ROW(исходник.J2:J552)= — Compare the next result to the row number that we are currently looking at.
MATCH(исходник.J2:J552;исходник.J$2:J$552;0)+ROW(J$2)-1; — Determine the first row that has this code. We do this to get unique results instead of 6 or more of each code in the result.
исходник.J2:J552;""))) — Return the code. (Your formula simply returns 1 here, which doesn't seem to be what you want.) If it doesn't match, return an empty string rather than 0, because TEXTJOIN ignores empty strings.
=COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B4)
is a code that gives 0 or a +ve result
I use this across 1500 cells which makes the sheet gets filled with 0s
I'd like to remove the Zeros by using the following formula
if(COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B3,Orders!$F:$F,""&P$1&"*")=0,
"",
COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B3,Orders!$F:$F,""&P$1&"*"))
This calculates every formula twice and increases the calculation time.
How can we do this in 1 formula where if the value is 0 - keep empty - otherwise display the answer
I suggest this cell-function:
=IFERROR(1/(1/COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B4)))
EDIT:
I'm not sure what to add as explanation. Basically to replace the result of a complex calculation with blank cells if it results in 0, you can wrap the complex function in
IFERROR(1/(1/ ComplexFunction() ))
It works by twice taking the inverse (1/X) of the result, thus returning the original result in all cases except 0 where a DIV0 error is generated. This error is then caught by IFERROR to result in a blank cell.
The advantage of this method is that it doesn't need to calculate the complex function twice, so can give a significant speed/readability increase, and doesn't fool the output like a custom number format which can be important if this cell is used in further functions.
You only need to set the number format for your range of cells.
Go to the menu Format-->Number-->More Formats-->Custom Number Format...
In the entry area at the top, enter the following: #;-#;""
The "format" of the format string is
(positive value format) ; (negative value format) ; (zero value format)
You can apply colors or commas or anything else. See this link for details
instead of your =COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B4) use:
=REGEXREPLACE(""&COUNTIFS(Orders!$T:$T,$B4), "^0$", )
also, to speed up things you should avoid "per row formulae" and use ArrayFormulas
I am trying to compare two data ranges to determine if they are the same or not.
I'm using the following statement and I get a #Value! error message:
=IF(SUM(ABS(B2:E7-G2:J7))=0,"Same", "Not")
If you are looking to see if the arithmetic total of the numbers in the two ranges is the same then this standard formula should do.
=IF(SUM(B2:E7)-SUM(G2:J7), "Not", "Same")
A zero in Excel evaluates to a boolean FALSE. Anything that is not false is TRUE.
This does not determine whether each cell directly corresponds to its 'sister' cell in the other range; only that the sum total of each is equal or not. The values in different cells could be interchanged or by coincidence be offset from one another in a perfect proportion to create an equal sum.
If you require a cell by cell analysis, then a much more complicated formula could be provided.
=IF(SUMPRODUCT(--(B2:E7=G2:J7))=24, "Same", "Not")
24 being the total number of cells in each range. While this does not require Ctrl+Shift+Enter, a SUMPRODUCT function does produce cyclic calculations.
Do you have strings in your answer or have the formula in row 1 or 8+? If yes that might be the reason as the formula works correctly assuming you
hit ctrl+shift+enter and
have only numbers in the ranges
For a general solution try
{=IF(AND(B2:E7=G2:J7),"Same","Not")}
Do not forget to hit ctrl+shift+enter as otherwise it will only look at the row the formula itself is in!
I am trying to find the recurrence relation for this problem on Codechef:
http://www.codechef.com/problems/BWALL
I know once I find it, I can easily solve it using matrix exponentiation. But I'm having trouble understanding how it gets the right answer. There is a solution here, but I'd like if someone explained it in a better manner?
Is there is a simple rule of thumb to find recurrences or something like that? Thanks!
The "general rule" to find a recurrence is to understand how is the solution of a problem related to the solutions of smaller problems. But more than that, I don't think that there's a general procedure to find the recurrence.
For this particular example, here is how you can find the recurrence.
Suppose that you have a big wall of size N. Now, just look at the end of the wall. More precisely, from the end of the wall, find the first place with a "vertical separation", i.e. the first place where you can split the wall into two smaller walls without L-shape.
Example:
(A) Here is the wall:
X###X#XXX#X
XX#XX#XXXXX
The splitting with the end gives you:
X###X#XXX #X
XX#XX#XXX XX
(B) Another wall
X###X#XXX
XX#XX#XXX
The splitting with the end gives you:
X###X# XXX
XX#XX# XXX
What is the size of the small piece of wall that you can get between the splitting and the end of the wall? Well, you can have 1, 2 or 3, but not more (otherwise, you could make a smallest splitting).
The possibilities for the small piece are actually the ones given in your question (yes, the 7 small blocks).
So, to build a wall with size N, you must:
build a wall of size N-1 and add to end the size-1 small block
or build a wall of size N-2 and add to end one of the four size-2 blocks
or build a wall of size N-3 and add to end one of the two size-3 blocks.
So, the number T(N) of possible walls with size N is
the number of walls with size N-1 (with size-1 block in the end) -> T(N-1)
plus the number of walls with size N-2 with 4 possible end blocks (with size 2) -> 4 T(N-2)
plus the number of walls with size N-3 with 2 possible end blocks (with size 3) -> 2 T(N-3)
And there you get your recurrence.
Hope it helps!
I'm looking for an algorithm, or at least theory of operation on how you would find similar text in two or more different strings...
Much like the question posed here: Algorithm to find articles with similar text, the difference being that my text strings will only ever be a handful of words.
Like say I have a string:
"Into the clear blue sky"
and I'm doing a compare with the following two strings:
"The color is sky blue" and
"In the blue clear sky"
I'm looking for an algorithm that can be used to match the text in the two, and decide on how close they match. In my case, spelling, and punctuation are going to be important. I don't want them to affect the ability to discover the real text. In the above example, if the color reference is stored as "'sky-blue'", I want it to still be able to match. However, the 3rd string listed should be a BETTER match over the second, etc.
I'm sure places like Google probably use something similar with the "Did you mean:" feature...
* EDIT *
In talking with a friend, he worked with a guy who wrote a paper on this topic. I thought I might share it with everyone reading this, as there are some really good methods and processes described in it...
Here's the link to his paper, I hope it is helpful to those reading this question, and on the topic of similar string algorithms.
Levenshtein distance will not completely work, because you want to allow rearrangements. I think your best bet is going to be to find best rearrangement with levenstein distance as cost for each word.
To find the cost of rearrangement, kinda like the pancake sorting problem. So, you can permute every combination of words (filtering out exact matches), with every combination of other string, trying to minimize a combination of permute distance and Levenshtein distance on each word pair.
edit:
Now that I have a second I can post a quick example (all 'best' guesses are on inspection and not actually running the algorithms):
original strings | best rearrangement w/ lev distance per word
Into the clear blue sky | Into the c_lear blue sky
The color is sky blue | is__ the colo_r blue sky
R_dist = dist( 3 1 2 5 4 ) --> 3 1 2 *4 5* --> *2 1 3* 4 5 --> *1 2* 3 4 5 = 3
L_dist = (2D+S) + (I+D+S) (Total Subsitutions: 2, deletions: 3, insertion: 1)
(notice all the flips include all elements in the range, and I use ranges where Xi - Xj = +/- 1)
Other example
original strings | best rearrangement w/ lev distance per word
Into the clear blue sky | Into the clear blue sky
In the blue clear sky | In__ the clear blue sky
R_dist = dist( 1 2 4 3 5 ) --> 1 2 *3 4* 5 = 1
L_dist = (2D) (Total Subsitutions: 0, deletions: 2, insertion: 0)
And to show all possible combinations of the three...
The color is sky blue | The colo_r is sky blue
In the blue clear sky | the c_lear in sky blue
R_dist = dist( 2 4 1 3 5 ) --> *2 3 1 4* 5 --> *1 3 2* 4 5 --> 1 *2 3* 4 5 = 3
L_dist = (D+I+S) + (S) (Total Subsitutions: 2, deletions: 1, insertion: 1)
Anyway you make the cost function the second choice will be lowest cost, which is what you expected!
One way to determine a measure of "overall similarity without respect to order" is to use some kind of compression-based distance. Basically, the way most compression algorithms (e.g. gzip) work is to scan along a string looking for string segments that have appeared earlier -- any time such a segment is found, it is replaced with an (offset, length) pair identifying the earlier segment to use. You can use measures of how well two strings compress to detect similarities between them.
Suppose you have a function string comp(string s) that returns a compressed version of s. You can then use the following expression as a "similarity score" between two strings s and t:
len(comp(s)) + len(comp(t)) - len(comp(s . t))
where . is taken to be concatenation. The idea is that you are measuring how much further you can compress t by looking at s first. If s == t, then len(comp(s . t)) will be barely any larger than len(comp(s)) and you'll get a high score, while if they are completely different, len(comp(s . t)) will be very near len(comp(s) + comp(t)) and you'll get a score near zero. Intermediate levels of similarity produce intermediate scores.
Actually the following formula is even better as it is symmetric (i.e. the score doesn't change depending on which string is s and which is t):
2 * (len(comp(s)) + len(comp(t))) - len(comp(s . t)) - len(comp(t . s))
This technique has its roots in information theory.
Advantages: good compression algorithms are already available, so you don't need to do much coding, and they run in linear time (or nearly so) so they're fast. By contrast, solutions involving all permutations of words grow super-exponentially in the number of words (although admittedly that may not be a problem in your case as you say you know there will only be a handful of words).
One way (although this is perhaps better suited a spellcheck-type algorithm) is the "edit distance", ie., calculate how many edits it takes to transform one string to another. A common technique is found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance
You might want to look into the algorithms used by biologists to compare DNA sequences, since they have to cope with many of the same things (chunks may be missing, or have been inserted, or just moved to a different position in the string.
The Smith-Waterman algorithm would be one example that'd probably work fairly well, although it might be too slow for your uses. Might give you a starting point, though.
i had a similar problem, i needed to get the percentage of characters in a string that were similar. it needed exact sequences, so for example "hello sir" and "sir hello" when compared needed to give me five characters that are the same, in this case they would be the two "hello"'s. it would then take the length of the longest of the two strings and give me a percentage of how similar they were. this is the code that i came up with
int compare(string a, string b){
return(a.size() > b.size() ? bigger(a,b) : bigger(b,a));
}
int bigger(string a, string b){
int maxcount = 0, currentcount = 0;//used to see which set of concurrent characters were biggest
for(int i = 0; i < a.size(); ++i){
for(int j = 0; j < b.size(); ++j){
if(a[i+j] == b[j]){
++currentcount;
}
else{
if(currentcount > maxcount){
maxcount = currentcount;
}//end if
currentcount = 0;
}//end else
}//end inner for loop
}//end outer for loop
return ((int)(((float)maxcount/((float)a.size()))*100));
}
I can't mark two answers here, so I'm going to answer and mark my own. The Levenshtein distance appears to be the correct method in most cases for this. But, it is worth mentioning j_random_hackers answer as well. I have used an implementation of LZMA to test his theory, and it proves to be a sound solution. In my original question I was looking for a method for short strings (2 to 200 chars), where the Levenshtein Distance algorithm will work. But, not mentioned in the question was the need to compare two (larger) strings (in this case, text files of moderate size) and to perform a quick check to see how similar the two are. I believe that this compression technique will work well but I have yet to study it to find at which point one becomes better than the other, in terms of the size of the sample data and the speed/cost of the operation in question. I think a lot of the answers given to this question are valuable, and worth mentioning, for anyone looking to solve a similar string ordeal like I'm doing here. Thank you all for your great answers, and I hope they can be used to serve others well too.
There's another way. Pattern recognition using convolution. Image A is run thru a Fourier transform. Image B also. Now superimposing F(A) over F(B) then transforming this back gives you a black image with a few white spots. Those spots indicate where A matches B strongly. Total sum of spots would indicate an overall similarity. Not sure how you'd run an FFT on strings but I'm pretty sure it would work.
The difficulty would be to match the strings semantically.
You could generate some kind of value based on the lexical properties of the string. e.g. They bot have blue, and sky, and they're in the same sentence, etc etc... But it won't handle cases where "Sky's jean is blue", or some other odd ball English construction that uses same words, but you'd need to parse the English grammar...
To do anything beyond lexical similarity, you'd need to look at natural language processing, and there isn't going to be one single algorith that would solve your problem.
Possible approach:
Construct a Dictionary with a string key of "word1|word2" for all combinations of words in the reference string. A single combination may happen multiple times, so the value of the Dictionary should be a list of numbers, each representing the distance between the words in the reference string.
When you do this, there will be duplication here: for every "word1|word2" dictionary entry, there will be a "word2|word1" entry with the same list of distance values, but negated.
For each combination of words in the comparison string (words 1 and 2, words 1 and 3, words 2 and 3, etc.), check the two keys (word1|word2 and word2|word1) in the reference string and find the closest value to the distance in the current string. Add the absolute value of the difference between the current distance and the closest distance to a counter.
If the closest reference distance between the words is in the opposite direction (word2|word1) as the comparison string, you may want to weight it smaller than if the closest value was in the same direction in both strings.
When you are finished, divide the sum by the square of the number of words in the comparison string.
This should provide some decimal value representing how closely each word/phrase matches some word/phrase in the original string.
Of course, if the original string is longer, it won't account for that, so it may be necessary to compute this both directions (using one as the reference, then the other) and average them.
I have absolutely no code for this, and I probably just re-invented a very crude wheel. YMMV.