Dynamic programming algorithm N, K problem - c++

An algorithm which will take two positive numbers N and K and calculate the biggest possible number we can get by transforming N into another number via removing K digits from N.
For ex, let say we have N=12345 and K=3 so the biggest possible number we can get by removing 3 digits from N is 45 (other transformations would be 12, 15, 35 but 45 is the biggest). Also you cannot change the order of the digits in N (so 54 is NOT a solution). Another example would be N=66621542 and K=3 so the solution will be 66654.
I know this is a dynamic programming related problem and I can't get any idea about solving it. I need to solve this for 2 days, so any help is appreciated. If you don't want to solve this for me you don't have to but please point me to the trick or at least some materials where i can read up more about some similar issues.
Thank you in advance.

This can be solved in O(L) where L = number of digits. Why use complicated DP formulas when we can use a stack to do this:
For: 66621542
Add a digit on the stack while there are less than or equal to L - K digits on the stack:
66621. Now, remove digits from the stack while they are less than the currently read digit and put the current digit on the stack:
read 5: 5 > 2, pop 1 off the stack. 5 > 2, pop 2 also. put 5: 6665
read 4: stack isnt full, put 4: 66654
read 2: 2 < 4, do nothing.
You need one more condition: be sure not to pop off more items from the stack than there are digits left in your number, otherwise your solution will be incomplete!
Another example: 12345
L = 5, K = 3
put L - K = 2 digits on the stack: 12
read 3, 3 > 2, pop 2, 3 > 1, pop 1, put 3. stack: 3
read 4, 4 > 3, pop 3, put 4: 4
read 5: 5 > 4, but we can't pop 4, otherwise we won't have enough digits left. so push 5: 45.

Well, to solve any dynamic programming problem, you need to break it down into recurring subsolutions.
Say we define your problem as A(n, k), which returns the largest number possible by removing k digits from n.
We can define a simple recursive algorithm from this.
Using your example, A(12345, 3) = max { A(2345, 2), A(1345, 2), A(1245, 2), A(1234, 2) }
More generally, A(n, k) = max { A(n with 1 digit removed, k - 1) }
And you base case is A(n, 0) = n.
Using this approach, you can create a table that caches the values of n and k.
int A(int n, int k)
{
typedef std::pair<int, int> input;
static std::map<input, int> cache;
if (k == 0) return n;
input i(n, k);
if (cache.find(i) != cache.end())
return cache[i];
cache[i] = /* ... as above ... */
return cache[i];
}
Now, that's the straight forward solution, but there is a better solution that works with a very small one-dimensional cache. Consider rephrasing the question like this: "Given a string n and integer k, find the lexicographically greatest subsequence in n of length k". This is essentially what your problem is, and the solution is much more simple.
We can now define a different function B(i, j), which gives the largest lexicographical sequence of length (i - j), using only the first i digits of n (in other words, having removed j digits from the first i digits of n).
Using your example again, we would have:
B(1, 0) = 1
B(2, 0) = 12
B(3, 0) = 123
B(3, 1) = 23
B(3, 2) = 3
etc.
With a little bit of thinking, we can find the recurrence relation:
B(i, j) = max( 10B(i-1, j) + ni , B(i-1, j-1) )
or, if j = i then B(i, j) = B(i-1, j-1)
and B(0, 0) = 0
And you can code that up in a very similar way to the above.

The trick to solving a dynamic programming problem is usually to figuring out what the structure of a solution looks like, and more specifically if it exhibits optimal substructure.
In this case, it seems to me that the optimal solution with N=12345 and K=3 would have an optimal solution to N=12345 and K=2 as part of the solution. If you can convince yourself that this holds, then you should be able to express a solution to the problem recursively. Then either implement this with memoisation or bottom-up.

The two most important elements of any dynamic programming solution are:
Defining the right subproblems
Defining a recurrence relation between the answer to a sub-problem and the answer to smaller sub-problems
Finding base cases, the smallest sub-problems whose answer does not depend on any other answers
Figuring out the scan order in which you must solve the sub-problems (so that you never use the recurrence relation based on uninitialized data)
You'll know that you have the right subproblems defined when
The problem you need the answer to is one of them
The base cases really are trivial
The recurrence is easy to evaluate
The scan order is straightforward
In your case, it is straightforward to specify the subproblems. Since this is probably homework, I will just give you the hint that you might wish that N had fewer digits to start off with.

Here's what i think:
Consider the first k + 1 digits from the left. Look for the biggest one, find it and remove the numbers to the left. If there exists two of the same biggest number, find the leftmost one and remove the numbers to the left of that. store the number of removed digits ( name it j ).
Do the same thing with the new number as N and k+1-j as K. Do this until k+1 -j equals to 1 (hopefully, it will, if i'm not mistaken).
The number you end up with will be the number you're looking for.

Related

Perfect sum problem with fixed subset size

I am looking for a least time-complex algorithm that would solve a variant of the perfect sum problem (initially: finding all variable size subset combinations from an array [*] of integers of size n that sum to a specific number x) where the subset combination size is of a fixed size k and return the possible combinations without direct and also indirect (when there's a combination containing the exact same elements from another in another order) duplicates.
I'm aware this problem is NP-hard, so I am not expecting a perfect general solution but something that could at least run in a reasonable time in my case, with n close to 1000 and k around 10
Things I have tried so far:
Finding a combination, then doing successive modifications on it and its modifications
Let's assume I have an array such as:
s = [1,2,3,3,4,5,6,9]
So I have n = 8, and I'd like x = 10 for k = 3
I found thanks to some obscure method (bruteforce?) a subset [3,3,4]
From this subset I'm finding other possible combinations by taking two elements out of it and replacing them with other elements that sum the same, i.e. (3, 3) can be replaced by (1, 5) since both got the same sum and the replacing numbers are not already in use. So I obtain another subset [1,5,4], then I repeat the process for all the obtained subsets... indefinitely?
The main issue as suggested here is that it's hard to determine when it's done and this method is rather chaotic. I imagined some variants of this method but they really are work in progress
Iterating through the set to list all k long combinations that sum to x
Pretty self explanatory. This is a naive method that do not work well in my case since I have a pretty large n and a k that is not small enough to avoid a catastrophically big number of combinations (the magnitude of the number of combinations is 10^27!)
I experimented several mechanism related to setting an area of research instead of stupidly iterating through all possibilities, but it's rather complicated and still work in progress
What would you suggest? (Snippets can be in any language, but I prefer C++)
[*] To clear the doubt about whether or not the base collection can contain duplicates, I used the term "array" instead of "set" to be more precise. The collection can contain duplicate integers in my case and quite much, with 70 different integers for 1000 elements (counts rounded), for example
With reasonable sum limit this problem might be solved using extension of dynamic programming approach for subset sum problem or coin change problem with predetermined number of coins. Note that we can count all variants in pseudopolynomial time O(x*n), but output size might grow exponentially, so generation of all variants might be a problem.
Make 3d array, list or vector with outer dimension x-1 for example: A[][][]. Every element A[p] of this list contains list of possible subsets with sum p.
We can walk through all elements (call current element item) of initial "set" (I noticed repeating elements in your example, so it is not true set).
Now scan A[] list from the last entry to the beginning. (This trick helps to avoid repeating usage of the same item).
If A[i - item] contains subsets with size < k, we can add all these subsets to A[i] appending item.
After full scan A[x] will contain subsets of size k and less, having sum x, and we can filter only those of size k
Example of output of my quick-made Delphi program for the next data:
Lst := [1,2,3,3,4,5,6,7];
k := 3;
sum := 10;
3 3 4
2 3 5 //distinct 3's
2 3 5
1 4 5
1 3 6
1 3 6 //distinct 3's
1 2 7
To exclude variants with distinct repeated elements (if needed), we can use non-first occurence only for subsets already containing the first occurence of item (so 3 3 4 will be valid while the second 2 3 5 won't be generated)
I literally translate my Delphi code into C++ (weird, I think :)
int main()
{
vector<vector<vector<int>>> A;
vector<int> Lst = { 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 };
int k = 3;
int sum = 10;
A.push_back({ {0} }); //fictive array to make non-empty variant
for (int i = 0; i < sum; i++)
A.push_back({{}});
for (int item : Lst) {
for (int i = sum; i >= item; i--) {
for (int j = 0; j < A[i - item].size(); j++)
if (A[i - item][j].size() < k + 1 &&
A[i - item][j].size() > 0) {
vector<int> t = A[i - item][j];
t.push_back(item);
A[i].push_back(t); //add new variant including current item
}
}
}
//output needed variants
for (int i = 0; i < A[sum].size(); i++)
if (A[sum][i].size() == k + 1) {
for (int j = 1; j < A[sum][i].size(); j++) //excluding fictive 0
cout << A[sum][i][j] << " ";
cout << endl;
}
}
Here is a complete solution in Python. Translation to C++ is left to the reader.
Like the usual subset sum, generation of the doubly linked summary of the solutions is pseudo-polynomial. It is O(count_values * distinct_sums * depths_of_sums). However actually iterating through them can be exponential. But using generators the way I did avoids using a lot of memory to generate that list, even if it can take a long time to run.
from collections import namedtuple
# This is a doubly linked list.
# (value, tail) will be one group of solutions. (next_answer) is another.
SumPath = namedtuple('SumPath', 'value tail next_answer')
def fixed_sum_paths (array, target, count):
# First find counts of values to handle duplications.
value_repeats = {}
for value in array:
if value in value_repeats:
value_repeats[value] += 1
else:
value_repeats[value] = 1
# paths[depth][x] will be all subsets of size depth that sum to x.
paths = [{} for i in range(count+1)]
# First we add the empty set.
paths[0][0] = SumPath(value=None, tail=None, next_answer=None)
# Now we start adding values to it.
for value, repeats in value_repeats.items():
# Reversed depth avoids seeing paths we will find using this value.
for depth in reversed(range(len(paths))):
for result, path in paths[depth].items():
for i in range(1, repeats+1):
if count < i + depth:
# Do not fill in too deep.
break
result += value
if result in paths[depth+i]:
path = SumPath(
value=value,
tail=path,
next_answer=paths[depth+i][result]
)
else:
path = SumPath(
value=value,
tail=path,
next_answer=None
)
paths[depth+i][result] = path
# Subtle bug fix, a path for value, value
# should not lead to value, other_value because
# we already inserted that first.
path = SumPath(
value=value,
tail=path.tail,
next_answer=None
)
return paths[count][target]
def path_iter(paths):
if paths.value is None:
# We are the tail
yield []
else:
while paths is not None:
value = paths.value
for answer in path_iter(paths.tail):
answer.append(value)
yield answer
paths = paths.next_answer
def fixed_sums (array, target, count):
paths = fixed_sum_paths(array, target, count)
return path_iter(paths)
for path in fixed_sums([1,2,3,3,4,5,6,9], 10, 3):
print(path)
Incidentally for your example, here are the solutions:
[1, 3, 6]
[1, 4, 5]
[2, 3, 5]
[3, 3, 4]
You should first sort the so called array. Secondly, you should determine if the problem is actually solvable, to save time... So what you do is you take the last k elements and see if the sum of those is larger or equal to the x value, if it is smaller, you are done it is not possible to do something like that.... If it is actually equal yes you are also done there is no other permutations.... O(n) feels nice doesn't it?? If it is larger, than you got a lot of work to do..... You need to store all the permutations in an seperate array.... Then you go ahead and replace the smallest of the k numbers with the smallest element in the array.... If this is still larger than x then you do it for the second and third and so on until you get something smaller than x. Once you reach a point where you have the sum smaller than x, you can go ahead and start to increase the value of the last position you stopped at until you hit x.... Once you hit x that is your combination.... Then you can go ahead and get the previous element so if you had 1,1,5, 6 in your thingy, you can go ahead and grab the 1 as well, add it to your smallest element, 5 to get 6, next you check, can you write this number 6 as a combination of two values, you stop once you hit the value.... Then you can repeat for the others as well.... You problem can be solved in O(n!) time in the worst case.... I would not suggest that you 10^27 combinations, meaning you have more than 10^27 elements, mhmmm bad idea do you even have that much space??? That's like 3bits for the header and 8 bits for each integer you would need 9.8765*10^25 terabytes just to store that clossal array, more memory than a supercomputer, you should worry about whether your computer can even store this monster rather than if you can solve the problem, that many combinations even if you find a quadratic solution it would crash your computer, and you know what quadratic is a long way off from O(n!)...
A brute force method using recursion might look like this...
For example, given variables set, x, k, the following pseudo code might work:
setSumStructure find(int[] set, int x, int k, int setIdx)
{
int sz = set.length - setIdx;
if (sz < x) return null;
if (sz == x) check sum of set[setIdx] -> set[set.size] == k. if it does, return the set together with the sum, else return null;
for (int i = setIdx; i < set.size - (k - 1); i++)
filter(find (set, x - set[i], k - 1, i + 1));
return filteredSets;
}

Count ways to n'th stair(order does not matter)

There are N stairs, and a person standing at the bottom wants to reach the top. The person can climb either 1 stair or 2 stairs at a time. Count the number of ways, the person can reach the top (order does not matter).
Note: Order does not matter means for n=4 {1 2 1},{2 1 1},{1 1 2} are considered same.
https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/count-ways-to-nth-stairorder-does-not-matter/0
So I have been trying to solve this question and the problem I am facing is that I don't understand how do we solve questions like these where the order does not matter? I was able to solve the question when order mattered but I am not able to develop the logic to solve this.
This is the code I wrote for when order mattered
long int countWaysToStair(long int N)
{
if(N == 1 || N == 2)
return N;
long int dp[N+1];
dp[0] = 1;
dp[1] = 1;
dp[2] = 2;
for(int i=3;i<=N;i++)
{
dp[i] = dp[i-1] + dp[i-2];
}
return dp[N];
}
Input:
4
Expected Output:
3
My output:
5
Consider that you have N stairs. First of all you have to understand if N is odd or even.
If is even than it will be a multiple of 2: N = 2*S, where S is the number of pair of stairs.
Suppose N = 6 and S = 3. Your first solution is {2,2,2}. than you can change the first 2 stairs with 1 + 1 stairs and you have your second solution {1, 1, 2 ,2}.
Since order doesn't matter let's proceed with the next pair and we have our third solution {1, 1, 1, 1, 2} and then the fourth {1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1}
Given N = 2*S the number of possible solutions are S + 1.
Now suppose N is odd and N = 2S + 1.
Let N = 7 and S = 3. Our solutions are {2,2,2,1}, {1,1,2,2,1}, {1,1,1,1,2,1} and {1,1,1,1,1,1,1}. Again, the number of solutions is given by S+1
Now your algorithm is pretty simple:
return N/2 + 1
The above answer is correct, but if you want to know how DP is used in this problem, look at this example:
jumps =[1,2]
Lets say that jump =1, so for any stair, the number of ways will always be equal to 1.
Now for jump=2, say for stair 8: no of ways will be (no of ways to reach 8 using 1 only)+(no of ways to reach 6 using both 1 and 2 because you can reach to 8 from 6 by just a jump of 2).
So the code will looks like:
for(int i=1; i<=n;i++)
dp[i]=1;
for(int i=2;i<=n;i++)
dp[i]=dp[i]+dp[i-2];
return dp[n];
Since the order does not matter, ways to reach at the Nth place would be:
1 way:
1,1,1,1,1....... 1
remaining n/2 ways:
1,1,1,1,1.......2
1,1,1,1,1.....2,2
.
.
.
1,2,2,2,2,2,2...2,2,2 or 2,2,2,2,2,2,2....2 (depends whether n is even or odd).
we can safely say that ways to reach at the Nth place would be n/2 +1

Every sum possibilities of elements

From a given array (call it numbers[]), i want another array (results[]) which contains all sum possibilities between elements of the first array.
For example, if I have numbers[] = {1,3,5}, results[] will be {1,3,5,4,8,6,9,0}.
there are 2^n possibilities.
It doesn't matter if a number appears two times because results[] will be a set
I did it for sum of pairs or triplet, and it's very easy. But I don't understand how it works when we sum 0, 1, 2 or n numbers.
This is what I did for pairs :
std::unordered_set<int> pairPossibilities(std::vector<int> &numbers) {
std::unordered_set<int> results;
for(int i=0;i<numbers.size()-1;i++) {
for(int j=i+1;j<numbers.size();j++) {
results.insert(numbers.at(i)+numbers.at(j));
}
}
return results;
}
Also, assuming that the numbers[] is sorted, is there any possibility to sort results[] while we fill it ?
Thanks!
This can be done with Dynamic Programming (DP) in O(n*W) where W = sum{numbers}.
This is basically the same solution of Subset Sum Problem, exploiting the fact that the problem has optimal substructure.
DP[i, 0] = true
DP[-1, w] = false w != 0
DP[i, w] = DP[i-1, w] OR DP[i-1, w - numbers[i]]
Start by following the above solution to find DP[n, sum{numbers}].
As a result, you will get:
DP[n , w] = true if and only if w can be constructed from numbers
Following on from the Dynamic Programming answer, You could go with a recursive solution, and then use memoization to cache the results, top-down approach in contrast to Amit's bottom-up.
vector<int> subsetSum(vector<int>& nums)
{
vector<int> ans;
generateSubsetSum(ans,0,nums,0);
return ans;
}
void generateSubsetSum(vector<int>& ans, int sum, vector<int>& nums, int i)
{
if(i == nums.size() )
{
ans.push_back(sum);
return;
}
generateSubsetSum(ans,sum + nums[i],nums,i + 1);
generateSubsetSum(ans,sum,nums,i + 1);
}
Result is : {9 4 6 1 8 3 5 0} for the set {1,3,5}
This simply picks the first number at the first index i adds it to the sum and recurses. Once it returns, the second branch follows, sum, without the nums[i] added. To memoize this you would have a cache to store sum at i.
I would do something like this (seems easier) [I wanted to put this in comment but can't write the shifting and removing an elem at a time - you might need a linked list]
1 3 5
3 5
-----
4 8
1 3 5
5
-----
6
1 3 5
3 5
5
------
9
Add 0 to the list in the end.
Another way to solve this is create a subset arrays of vector of elements then sum up each array's vector's data.
e.g
1 3 5 = {1, 3} + {1,5} + {3,5} + {1,3,5} after removing sets of single element.
Keep in mind that it is always easier said than done. A single tiny mistake along the implemented algorithm would take a lot of time in debug to find it out. =]]
There has to be a binary chop version, as well. This one is a bit heavy-handed and relies on that set of answers you mention to filter repeated results:
Split the list into 2,
and generate the list of sums for each half
by recursion:
the minimum state is either
2 entries, with 1 result,
or 3 entries with 3 results
alternatively, take it down to 1 entry with 0 results, if you insist
Then combine the 2 halves:
All the returned entries from both halves are legitimate results
There are 4 additional result sets to add to the output result by combining:
The first half inputs vs the second half inputs
The first half outputs vs the second half inputs
The first half inputs vs the second half outputs
The first half outputs vs the second half outputs
Note that the outputs of the two halves may have some elements in common, but they should be treated separately for these combines.
The inputs can be scrubbed from the returned outputs of each recursion if the inputs are legitimate final results. If they are they can either be added back in at the top-level stage or returned by the bottom level stage and not considered again in the combining.
You could use a bitfield instead of a set to filter out the duplicates. There are reasonably efficient ways of stepping through a bitfield to find all the set bits. The max size of the bitfield is the sum of all the inputs.
There is no intelligence here, but lots of opportunity for parallel processing within the recursion and combine steps.

how to find the minimum number of primatics that sum to a given number

Given a number N (<=10000), find the minimum number of primatic numbers which sum up to N.
A primatic number refers to a number which is either a prime number or can be expressed as power of prime number to itself i.e. prime^prime e.g. 4, 27, etc.
I tried to find all the primatic numbers using seive and then stored them in a vector (code below) but now I am can't see how to find the minimum of primatic numbers that sum to a given number.
Here's my sieve:
#include<algorithm>
#include<vector>
#define MAX 10000
typedef long long int ll;
ll modpow(ll a, ll n, ll temp) {
ll res=1, y=a;
while (n>0) {
if (n&1)
res=(res*y)%temp;
y=(y*y)%temp;
n/=2;
}
return res%temp;
}
int isprimeat[MAX+20];
std::vector<int> primeat;
//Finding all prime numbers till 10000
void seive()
{
ll i,j;
isprimeat[0]=1;
isprimeat[1]=1;
for (i=2; i<=MAX; i++) {
if (isprimeat[i]==0) {
for (j=i*i; j<=MAX; j+=i) {
isprimeat[j]=1;
}
}
}
for (i=2; i<=MAX; i++) {
if (isprimeat[i]==0) {
primeat.push_back(i);
}
}
isprimeat[4]=isprimeat[27]=isprimeat[3125]=0;
primeat.push_back(4);
primeat.push_back(27);
primeat.push_back(3125);
}
int main()
{
seive();
std::sort(primeat.begin(), primeat.end());
return 0;
}
One method could be to store all primatics less than or equal to N in a sorted list - call this list L - and recursively search for the shortest sequence. The easiest approach is "greedy": pick the largest spans / numbers as early as possible.
for N = 14 you'd have L = {2,3,4,5,7,8,9,11,13}, so you'd want to make an algorithm / process that tries these sequences:
13 is too small
13 + 13 -> 13 + 2 will be too large
11 is too small
11 + 11 -> 11 + 4 will be too large
11 + 3 is a match.
You can continue the process by making the search function recurse each time it needs another primatic in the sum, which you would aim to have occur a minimum number of times. To do so you can pick the largest -> smallest primatic in each position (the 1st, 2nd etc primatic in the sum), and include another number in the sum only if the primatics in the sum so far are small enough that an additional primatic won't go over N.
I'd have to make a working example to find a small enough N that doesn't result in just 2 numbers in the sum. Note that because you can express any natural number as the sum of at most 4 squares of natural numbers, and you have a more dense set L than the set of squares, so I'd think it rare you'd have a result of 3 or more for any N you'd want to compute by hand.
Dynamic Programming approach
I have to clarify that 'greedy' is not the same as 'dynamic programming', it can give sub-optimal results. This does have a DP solution though. Again, i won't write the final process in code but explain it as a point of reference to make a working DP solution from.
To do this we need to build up solutions from the bottom up. What you need is a structure that can store known solutions for all numbers up to some N, this list can be incrementally added to for larger N in an optimal way.
Consider that for any N, if it's primatic then the number of terms for N is just 1. This applies for N=2-5,7-9,11,13,16,17,19. The number of terms for all other N must be at least two, which means either it's a sum of two primatics or a sum of a primatic and some other N.
The first few examples that aren't trivial:
6 - can be either 2+4 or 3+3, all the terms here are themselves primatic so the minimum number of terms for 6 is 2.
10 - can be either 2+8, 3+7, 4+6 or 5+5. However 6 is not primatic, and taking that solution out leaves a minimum of 2 terms.
12 - can be either 2+10, 3+9, 4+8, 5+7 or 6+6. Of these 6+6 and 2+10 contain non-primatics while the others do not, so again 2 terms is the minimum.
14 - ditto, there exist two-primatic solutions: 3+11, 5+9, 7+7.
The structure for storing all of these solutions needs to be able to iterate across solutions of equal rank / number of terms. You already have a list of primatics, this is also the list of solutions that need only one term.
Sol[term_length] = list(numbers). You will also need a function / cache to look up some N's shortest-term-length, eg S(N) = term_length iif N in Sol[term_length]
Sol[1] = {2,3,4,5 ...} and Sol[2] = {6,10,12,14 ...} and so on for Sol[3] and onwards.
Any solution can be found using one term from Sol[1] that is primatic. Any solution requiring two primatics will be found in Sol[2]. Any solution requiring 3 will be in Sol[3] etc.
What you need to recognize here is that a number S(N) = 3 can be expressed Sol[1][a] + Sol[1][b] + Sol[1][c] for some a,b,c primatics, but it can also be expressed as Sol[1][a] + Sol[2][d], since all Sol[2] must be expressible as Sol[1][x] + Sol[1][y].
This algorithm will in effect search Sol[1] for a given N, then look in Sol[1] + Sol[K] with increasing K, but to do this you will need S and Sol structures roughly in the form shown here (or able to be accessed / queried in a similar manner).
Working Example
Using the above as a guideline I've put this together quickly, it even shows which multi-term sum it uses.
https://ideone.com/7mYXde
I can explain the code in-depth if you want but the real DP section is around lines 40-64. The recursion depth (also number of additional terms in the sum) is k, a simple dual-iterator while loop checks if a sum is possible using the kth known solutions and primatics, if it is then we're done and if not then check k+1 solutions, if any. Sol and S work as described.
The only confusing part might be the use of reverse iterators, it's just to make != end() checking consistent for the while condition (end is not a valid iterator position but begin is, so != begin would be written differently).
Edit - FYI, the first number that takes at least 3 terms is 959 - had to run my algorithm to 1000 numbers to find it. It's summed from 6 + 953 (primatic), no matter how you split 6 it's still 3 terms.

Array: mathematical sequence

An array of integers A[i] (i > 1) is defined in the following way: an element A[k] ( k > 1) is the smallest number greater than A[k-1] such that the sum of its digits is equal to the sum of the digits of the number 4* A[k-1] .
You need to write a program that calculates the N th number in this array based on the given first element A[1] .
INPUT:
In one line of standard input there are two numbers seperated with a single space: A[1] (1 <= A[1] <= 100) and N (1 <= N <= 10000).
OUTPUT:
The standard output should only contain a single integer A[N] , the Nth number of the defined sequence.
Input:
7 4
Output:
79
Explanation:
Elements of the array are as follows: 7, 19, 49, 79... and the 4th element is solution.
I tried solving this by coding a separate function that for a given number A[k] calculates the sum of it's digits and finds the smallest number greater than A[k-1] as it says in the problem, but with no success. The first testing failed because of a memory limit, the second testing failed because of a time limit, and now i don't have any possible idea how to solve this. One friend suggested recursion, but i don't know how to set that.
Anyone who can help me in any way please write, also suggest some ideas about using recursion/DP for solving this problem. Thanks.
This has nothing to do with recursion and almost nothing with dynamic programming. You just need to find viable optimizations to make it fast enough. Just a hint, try to understand this solution:
http://codepad.org/LkTJEILz
Here is a simple solution in python. It only uses iteration, recursion is unnecessary and inefficient even for a quick and dirty solution.
def sumDigits(x):
sum = 0;
while(x>0):
sum += x % 10
x /= 10
return sum
def homework(a0, N):
a = [a0]
while(len(a) < N):
nextNum = a[len(a)-1] + 1
while(sumDigits(nextNum) != sumDigits(4 * a[len(a)-1])):
nextNum += 1
a.append(nextNum)
return a[N-1]
PS. I know we're not really supposed to give homework answers, but it appears the OP is in an intro to C++ class so probably doesn't know python yet, hopefully it just looks like pseudo code. Also the code is missing many simple optimizations which would probably make it too slow for a solution as is.
It is rather recursive.
The kernel of the problem is:
Find the smallest number N greater than K having digitsum(N) = J.
If digitsum(K) == J then test if N = K + 9 satisfies the condition.
If digitsum(K) < J then possibly N differs from K only in the ones digit (if the digitsum can be achieved without exceeding 9).
Otherwise if digitsum(K) <= J the new ones digit is 9 and the problem recurses to "Find the smallest number N' greater than (K/10) having digitsum(N') = J-9, then N = N'*10 + 9".
If digitsum(K) > J then ???
In every case N <= 4 * K
9 -> 18 by the first rule
52 -> 55 by the second rule
99 -> 189 by the third rule, the first rule is used during recursion
25 -> 100 requires the fourth case, which I had originally not seen the need for.
Any more counterexamples?