I have defined the following:
typdef enum {
none = 0,
alpha = 1,
beta = 2,
delta = 4
gamma = 8
omega = 16,
} Greek;
Greek t = beta | delta | gammax
I would like to be able to pick one of the flags set in t randomly. The value of t can vary (it could be, anything from the enum).
One thought I had was something like this:
r = 0;
while ( !t & ( 2 << r ) { r = rand(0,4); }
Anyone got any more elegant ideas?
If it helps, I want to do this in ObjC...
Assuming I've correctly understood your intent, if your definition of "elegant" includes table lookups the following should do the trick pretty efficiently. I've written enough to show how it works, but didn't fill out the entire table. Also, for Objective-C I recommend arc4random over using rand.
First, construct an array whose indices are the possible t values and whose elements are arrays of t's underlying Greek values. I ignored none, but that's a trivial addition to make if you want it. I also found it easiest to specify the lengths of the subarrays. Alternatively, you could do this with NSArrays and have them self-report their lengths:
int myArray[8][4] = {
{0},
{1},
{2},
{1,2},
{4},
{4,1},
{4,2},
{4,2,1}
};
int length[] = {1,1,1,2,1,2,2,3};
Then, for any given t you can randomly select one of its elements using:
int r = myArray[t][arc4random_uniform(length[t])];
Once you get past the setup, the actual random selection is efficient, with no acceptance/rejection looping involved.
Related
I have recently sat a computing exam in university in which we were never taught beforehand about the modulus function or any other check for odd/even function and we have no access to external documentation except our previous lecture notes. Is it possible to do this without these and how?
Bitwise AND (&)
Extract the last bit of the number using the bitwise AND operator. If the last bit is 1, then it's odd, else it's even. This is the simplest and most efficient way of testing it. Examples in some languages:
C / C++ / C#
bool is_even(int value) {
return (value & 1) == 0;
}
Java
public static boolean is_even(int value) {
return (value & 1) == 0;
}
Python
def is_even(value):
return (value & 1) == 0
I assume this is only for integer numbers as the concept of odd/even eludes me for floating point values.
For these integer numbers, the check of the Least Significant Bit (LSB) as proposed by Rotem is the most straightforward method, but there are many other ways to accomplish that.
For example, you could use the integer division operation as a test. This is one of the most basic operation which is implemented in virtually every platform. The result of an integer division is always another integer. For example:
>> x = int64( 13 ) ;
>> x / 2
ans =
7
Here I cast the value 13 as a int64 to make sure MATLAB treats the number as an integer instead of double data type.
Also here the result is actually rounded towards infinity to the next integral value. This is MATLAB specific implementation, other platform might round down but it does not matter for us as the only behavior we look for is the rounding, whichever way it goes. The rounding allow us to define the following behavior:
If a number is even: Dividing it by 2 will produce an exact result, such that if we multiply this result by 2, we obtain the original number.
If a number is odd: Dividing it by 2 will result in a rounded result, such that multiplying it by 2 will yield a different number than the original input.
Now you have the logic worked out, the code is pretty straightforward:
%% sample input
x = int64(42) ;
y = int64(43) ;
%% define the checking function
% uses only multiplication and division operator, no high level function
is_even = #(x) int64(x) == (int64(x)/2)*2 ;
And obvisouly, this will yield:
>> is_even(x)
ans =
1
>> is_even(y)
ans =
0
I found out from a fellow student how to solve this simplistically with maths instead of functions.
Using (-1)^n :
If n is odd then the outcome is -1
If n is even then the outcome is 1
This is some pretty out-of-the-box thinking, but it would be the only way to solve this without previous knowledge of complex functions including mod.
DISCLAIMER: Rather theoretical question here, not looking for a correct answere, just asking for some inspiration!
Consider this:
A function is called repetitively and returns integers based on seeds (the same seed returns the same integer). Your task is to find out which integer is returned most often. Easy enough, right?
But: You are not allowed to use arrays or fields to store return values of said function!
Example:
int mostFrequentNumber = 0;
int occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber = 0;
int iterations = 10000000;
for(int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
int result = getNumberFromSeed(i);
int occurencesOfResult = magic();
if(occurencesOfResult > occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber)
{
mostFrequentNumber = result;
occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber = occurencesOfResult;
}
}
If getNumberFromSeed() returns 2,1,5,18,5,6 and 5 then mostFrequentNumber should be 5 and occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber should be 3 because 5 is returned 3 times.
I know this could easily be solved using a two-dimentional list to store results and occurences. But imagine for a minute that you can not use any kind of arrays, lists, dictionaries etc. (Maybe because the system that is running the code has such a limited memory, that you cannot store enough integers at once or because your prehistoric programming language has no concept of collections).
How would you find mostFrequentNumber and occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber? What does magic() do?? (Of cause you do not have to stick to the example code. Any ideas are welcome!)
EDIT: I should add that the integers returned by getNumber() should be calculated using a seed, so the same seed returns the same integer (i.e. int result = getNumber(5); this would always assign the same value to result)
Make an hypothesis: Assume that the distribution of integers is, e.g., Normal.
Start simple. Have two variables
. N the number of elements read so far
. M1 the average of said elements.
Initialize both variables to 0.
Every time you read a new value x update N to be N + 1 and M1 to be M1 + (x - M1)/N.
At the end M1 will equal the average of all values. If the distribution was Normal this value will have a high frequency.
Now improve the above. Add a third variable:
M2 the average of all (x - M1)^2 for all values of xread so far.
Initialize M2 to 0. Now get a small memory of say 10 elements or so. For every new value x that you read update N and M1 as above and M2 as:
M2 := M2 + (x - M1)^2 * (N - 1) / N
At every step M2 is the variance of the distribution and sqrt(M2) its standard deviation.
As you proceed remember the frequencies of only the values read so far whose distances to M1 are less than sqrt(M2). This requires the use of some additional array, however, the array will be very short compared to the high number of iterations you will run. This modification will allow you to guess better the most frequent value instead of simply answering the mean (or average) as above.
UPDATE
Given that this is about insights for inspiration there is plenty of room for considering and adapting the approach I've proposed to any particular situation. Here are some thoughts
When I say assume that the distribution is Normal you should think of it as: Given that the problem has no solution, let's see if there is some qualitative information I can use to decide what kind of distribution would the data have. Given that the algorithm is intended to find the most frequent number, it should be fine to assume that the distribution is not uniform. Let's try with Normal, LogNormal, etc. to see what can be found out (more on this below.)
If the game completely disallows the use of any array, then fine, keep track of only, say 10 numbers. This would allow you to count the occurrences of the 10 best candidates, which will give more confidence to your answer. In doing this choose your candidates around the theoretical most likely value according to the distribution of your hypothesis.
You cannot use arrays but perhaps you can read the sequence of numbers two or three times, not just once. In that case you can read it once to check whether you hypothesis about its distribution is good nor bad. For instance, if you compute not just the variance but the skewness and the kurtosis you will have more elements to check your hypothesis. For instance, if the first reading indicates that there is some bias, you could use a LogNormal distribution instead, etc.
Finally, in addition to providing the approximate answer you would be able to use the information collected during the reading to estimate an interval of confidence around your answer.
Alright, I found a decent solution myself:
int mostFrequentNumber = 0;
int occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber = 0;
int iterations = 10000000;
int maxNumber = -2147483647;
int minNumber = 2147483647;
//Step 1: Find the largest and smallest number that _can_ occur
for(int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
int result = getNumberFromSeed(i);
if(result > maxNumber)
{
maxNumber = result;
}
if(result < minNumber)
{
minNumber = result;
}
}
//Step 2: for each possible number between minNumber and maxNumber, count occurences
for(int thisNumber = minNumber; thisNumber <= maxNumber; thisNumber++)
{
int occurenceOfThisNumber = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
{
int result = getNumberFromSeed(i);
if(result == thisNumber)
{
occurenceOfThisNumber++;
}
}
if(occurenceOfThisNumber > occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber)
{
occurencesOfMostFrequentNumber = occurenceOfThisNumber;
mostFrequentNumber = thisNumber;
}
}
I must admit, this may take a long time, depending on the smallest and largest possible. But it will work without using arrays.
I've looked through the vDSP and BLAS reference docs, and can't seem to find anything on appending / removing a row or column from a matrix. I'm currently using for-loops, but would rather use an accelerate function if one exists.
We can use vDSP_mmov(1) or vDSP_mmovD(2). Below sample to append 1 row at end.
//sanple to add 1 row
float dst[4][4] = { 1,2,3,4, 5,6,7,8, 9,10,11,12 } ; //last row empty
float src[1][4] = { 13,14,15,16 };
//to fill last row
int numColumnsToCopy = 4;
int numRowsToCopy = 1;
int numColsinDst = 4;
int numColsinSrc = 4;
vDSP_mmov(src, &dst[3][0], numColumnsToCopy, numRowsToCopy, numColsinSrc, numColsinDst );
The same sample could be tweaked to append/remove rows/columns at the end. Though you could overwrite rows/columns in middle, I am not sure if you could append/remove a row/column in middle of matrix as that will need shifts. You might need to split then.
Though there is no harm in using for one off runs, you might not get speed benefits you are looking for. For repetitive runs, these frameworks help.
I'm Cesare from Italy (please excuse my english), this is my first question posted on StackOverflow and I'm pretty new to Objective-C... I hope I won't make a mess on my first try.
I would like to "combine" two integers that I already have to create a new float (or a double).
By "combine", I mean that I'd like to have the first int before the point and the second int after the point, I'm not trying to convert from int to float. Maybe an example could explain better what I'm trying to do:
First int: 7
Second int: 92
The float I'm trying to get: 7.92
I looked for a previous question like mine but I haven't found anything, maybe because what I'm trying to do is pretty dumb (I have a UIPickerView with 2 components, each containing hundreds of integers, and I'm trying to create a float or double variable that has the selection of the first component before the point and the selection of the second component after the point).
Thanks in advance for your help,
Cesare
Just think about what the definition and/or the purpose of the decimal point is. It separates the part of the number which is less than one from the part greater than or equal to one.
So, keep dividing the part after the decimal point until it's less than 1:
int firstPart = 7;
int secondPart = 92; // or whatever
float f = secondPart;
while (f >= 1) {
f /= 10;
}
f += firstPart;
I know this is later, but came across a similar situation. Maybe this is more efficient.
Take the second number, 92 and divide it by 100. That gives you .92. Add that to the first number. That can give you 7.92. However, since you're adding integers that you want converted to a float, you'll need to cast the numbers when adding them. Like this:
int firstPart = 7;
int secondPart = 92;
float afterDecimalPlace = (float)secondPart/100.0;
float numberAsFloat = (float)firstPart + afterDecimalPlace;
essentially that is:
92/100 = .92
7 + .92 = 7.92
I have a set of N items, which are sets of integers, let's assume it's ordered and call it I[1..N]. Given a candidate set, I need to find the subset of I which have non-empty intersections with the candidate.
So, for example, if:
I = [{1,2}, {2,3}, {4,5}]
I'm looking to define valid_items(items, candidate), such that:
valid_items(I, {1}) == {1}
valid_items(I, {2}) == {1, 2}
valid_items(I, {3,4}) == {2, 3}
I'm trying to optimize for one given set I and a variable candidate sets. Currently I am doing this by caching items_containing[n] = {the sets which contain n}. In the above example, that would be:
items_containing = [{}, {1}, {1,2}, {2}, {3}, {3}]
That is, 0 is contained in no items, 1 is contained in item 1, 2 is contained in itmes 1 and 2, 2 is contained in item 2, 3 is contained in item 2, and 4 and 5 are contained in item 3.
That way, I can define valid_items(I, candidate) = union(items_containing[n] for n in candidate).
Is there any more efficient data structure (of a reasonable size) for caching the result of this union? The obvious example of space 2^N is not acceptable, but N or N*log(N) would be.
I think your current solution is optimal big-O wise, though there are micro-optimization techniques that could improve its actual performance. Such as using bitwise operations when merging the chosen set in item_containing set with the valid items set.
i.e. you store items_containing as this:
items_containing = [0x0000, 0x0001, 0x0011, 0x0010, 0x0100, 0x0100]
and your valid_items can use bit-wise OR to merge like this:
int valid_items(Set I, Set candidate) {
// if you need more than 32-items, use int[] for valid
// and int[][] for items_containing
int valid = 0x0000;
for (int item : candidate) {
// bit-wise OR
valid |= items_containing[item];
}
return valid;
}
but they don't really change the Big-O performance.
One representation that might help is storing the sets I as vectors V of size n whose entries V(i) are 0 when i is not in V and positive otherwise. Then to take the intersection of two vectors you multiply the terms, and to take the union you add the terms.