How to distribute values linearly - javascript

I have a total of 10,000 that I want distributed among 99 points, not divided equally but on an increasing linear curve. So while the first point may be worth only [e.g.] 10, each following point would be worth more until the final one is worth [e.g.] 250 or so. But all points need total the 10,000. How could I do that?
// Edit: The first and last values of 10 and 250 are just examples, they could be anything really. The total though (10,000) needs to be variable, so I could change it to 20,000 later if needed.

Take the 99 cells with values [1,2,3,4,..,99] and multiply each number by S/4950 where S is the desired sum (e.g. S=10,000).

Starting at 3, and going up to 199, across 99 points, totaling 10,000. Is this a HW question?
var total = 0;
for (var i = 1; i < 100; i += 1) {
total += i * 2 + 1;
}
alert(total);

This is pretty vague but if the first point has value X and the gap between successive points is Y then the total of 99 such points is
(99 * X) + (0.5 * 99 * 98 * Y)
You can use this formula to play around with a suitable value of X and Y such that your total of 10,000 is satisfied. For example you could fix X first then solve the total for Y but this may not yield an integer result which may make it unsuitable. Unfortunately for certain totals there may not be integer solutions X and Y but your requirements seem rather arbitrary so I am sure you can use the above to arrive at a suitable value of X,Y and the total for your needs. It may serve you until you get a better answer.

I had a similar thing I wanted to do. Even though it is a bit late, perhaps this can help others.
Came up with the following:
var total = 10000;
var len_array = 99;
var points_array = [];
var next_no
var sum_check =0;
for (var i = 0; i < (len_array); i += 1) {
next_no = ((1- i/len_array)/(0.5 * len_array + 0.5)) * total
points_array.push(next_no);
sum_check = sum_check + next_no;
}

Related

Trying to optimize my code to either remove nested loop or make it more efficient

A friend of mine takes a sequence of numbers from 1 to n (where n > 0)
Within that sequence, he chooses two numbers, a and b
He says that the product of a and b should be equal to the sum of all numbers in the sequence, excluding a and b
Given a number n, could you tell me the numbers he excluded from the sequence?
Have found the solution to this Kata from Code Wars but it times out (After 12 seconds) in the editor when I run it; any ideas as too how I should further optimize the nested for loop and or remove it?
function removeNb(n) {
var nArray = [];
var sum = 0;
var answersArray = [];
for (let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
nArray.push(n - (n - i));
sum += i;
}
var length = nArray.length;
for (let i = Math.round(n / 2); i < length; i++) {
for (let y = Math.round(n / 2); y < length; y++) {
if (i != y) {
if (i * y === sum - i - y) {
answersArray.push([i, y]);
break;
}
}
}
}
return answersArray;
}
console.log(removeNb(102));
.as-console-wrapper { max-height: 100% !important; top: 0; }
I think there is no reason for calculating the sum after you fill the array, you can do that while filling it.
function removeNb(n) {
let nArray = [];
let sum = 0;
for(let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
nArray.push(i);
sum += i;
}
}
And since there could be only two numbers a and b as the inputs for the formula a * b = sum - a - b, there could be only one possible value for each of them. So, there's no need to continue the loop when you find them.
if(i*y === sum - i - y) {
answersArray.push([i,y]);
break;
}
I recommend looking at the problem in another way.
You are trying to find two numbers a and b using this formula a * b = sum - a - b.
Why not reduce the formula like this:
a * b + a = sum - b
a ( b + 1 ) = sum - b
a = (sum - b) / ( b + 1 )
Then you only need one for loop that produces the value of b, check if (sum - b) is divisible by ( b + 1 ) and if the division produces a number that is less than n.
for(let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
let eq1 = sum - i;
let eq2 = i + 1;
if (eq1 % eq2 === 0) {
let a = eq1 / eq2;
if (a < n && a != i) {
return [[a, b], [b, a]];
}
}
}
You can solve this in linear time with two pointers method (page 77 in the book).
In order to gain intuition towards a solution, let's start thinking about this part of your code:
for(let i = Math.round(n/2); i < length; i++) {
for(let y = Math.round(n/2); y < length; y++) {
...
You already figured out this is the part of your code that is slow. You are trying every combination of i and y, but what if you didn't have to try every single combination?
Let's take a small example to illustrate why you don't have to try every combination.
Suppose n == 10 so we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 where sum = 55.
Suppose the first combination we tried was 1*10.
Does it make sense to try 1*9 next? Of course not, since we know that 1*10 < 55-10-1 we know we have to increase our product, not decrease it.
So let's try 2*10. Well, 20 < 55-10-2 so we still have to increase.
3*10==30 < 55-3-10==42
4*10==40 < 55-4-10==41
But then 5*10==50 > 55-5-10==40. Now we know we have to decrease our product. We could either decrease 5 or we could decrease 10, but we already know that there is no solution if we decrease 5 (since we tried that in the previous step). So the only choice is to decrease 10.
5*9==45 > 55-5-9==41. Same thing again: we have to decrease 9.
5*8==40 < 55-5-8==42. And now we have to increase again...
You can think about the above example as having 2 pointers which are initialized to the beginning and end of the sequence. At every step we either
move the left pointer towards right
or move the right pointer towards left
In the beginning the difference between pointers is n-1. At every step the difference between pointers decreases by one. We can stop when the pointers cross each other (and say that no solution can be obtained if one was not found so far). So clearly we can not do more than n computations before arriving at a solution. This is what it means to say that the solution is linear with respect to n; no matter how large n grows, we never do more than n computations. Contrast this to your original solution, where we actually end up doing n^2 computations as n grows large.
Hassan is correct, here is a full solution:
function removeNb (n) {
var a = 1;
var d = 1;
// Calculate the sum of the numbers 1-n without anything removed
var S = 0.5 * n * (2*a + (d *(n-1)));
// For each possible value of b, calculate a if it exists.
var results = [];
for (let numB = a; numB <= n; numB++) {
let eq1 = S - numB;
let eq2 = numB + 1;
if (eq1 % eq2 === 0) {
let numA = eq1 / eq2;
if (numA < n && numA != numB) {
results.push([numA, numB]);
results.push([numB, numA]);
}
}
}
return results;
}
In case it's of interest, CY Aries pointed this out:
ab + a + b = n(n + 1)/2
add 1 to both sides
ab + a + b + 1 = (n^2 + n + 2) / 2
(a + 1)(b + 1) = (n^2 + n + 2) / 2
so we're looking for factors of (n^2 + n + 2) / 2 and have some indication about the least size of the factor. This doesn't necessarily imply a great improvement in complexity for the actual search but still it's kind of cool.
This is part comment, part answer.
In engineering terms, the original function posted is using "brute force" to solve the problem, iterating every (or more than needed) possible combinations. The number of iterations is n is large - if you did all possible it would be
n * (n-1) = bazillio n
Less is More
So lets look at things that can be optimized, first some minor things, I'm a little confused about the first for loop and nArray:
// OP's code
for(let i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
nArray.push(n - (n - i));
sum += i;
}
??? You don't really use nArray for anything? Length is just n .. am I so sleep deprived I'm missing something? And while you can sum a consecutive sequence of integers 1-n by using a for loop, there is a direct and easy way that avoids a loop:
sum = ( n + 1 ) * n * 0.5 ;
THE LOOPS
// OP's loops, not optimized
for(let i = Math.round(n/2); i < length; i++) {
for(let y = Math.round(n/2); y < length; y++) {
if(i != y) {
if(i*y === sum - i - y) {
Optimization Considerations:
I see you're on the right track in a way, cutting the starting i, y values in half since the factors . But you're iterating both of them in the same direction : UP. And also, the lower numbers look like they can go a little below half of n (perhaps not because the sequence start at 1, I haven't confirmed that, but it seems the case).
Plus we want to avoid division every time we start an instantiation of the loop (i.e set the variable once, and also we're going to change it). And finally, with the IF statements, i and y will never be equal to each other the way we're going to create the loops, so that's a conditional that can vanish.
But the more important thing is the direction of transversing the loops. The smaller factor low is probably going to be close to the lowest loop value (about half of n) and the larger factor hi is probably going to be near the value of n. If we has some solid math theory that said something like "hi will never be less than 0.75n" then we could make a couple mods to take advantage of that knowledge.
The way the loops are show below, they break and iterate before the hi and low loops meet.
Moreover, it doesn't matter which loop picks the lower or higher number, so we can use this to shorten the inner loop as number pairs are tested, making the loop smaller each time. We don't want to waste time checking the same pair of numbers more than once! The lower factor's loop will start a little below half of n and go up, and the higher factor's loop will start at n and go down.
// Code Fragment, more optimized:
let nHi = n;
let low = Math.trunc( n * 0.49 );
let sum = ( n + 1 ) * n * 0.5 ;
// While Loop for the outside (incrementing) loop
while( low < nHi ) {
// FOR loop for the inside decrementing loop
for(let hi = nHi; hi > low; hi--) {
// If we're higher than the sum, we exit, decrement.
if( hi * low + hi + low > sum ) {
continue;
}
// If we're equal, then we're DONE and we write to array.
else if( hi * low + hi + low === sum) {
answersArray.push([hi, low]);
low = nHi; // Note this is if we want to end once finding one pair
break; // If you want to find ALL pairs for large numbers then replace these low = nHi; with low++;
}
// And if not, we increment the low counter and restart the hi loop from the top.
else {
low++;
break;
}
} // close for
} // close while
Tutorial:
So we set the few variables. Note that low is set slightly less than half of n, as larger numbers look like they could be a few points less. Also, we don't round, we truncate, which is essentially "always rounding down", and is slightly better for performance, (though it dosenit matter in this instance with just the single assignment).
The while loop starts at the lowest value and increments, potentially all the way up to n-1. The hi FOR loop starts at n (copied to nHi), and then decrements until the factor are found OR it intercepts at low + 1.
The conditionals:
First IF: If we're higher than the sum, we exit, decrement, and continue at a lower value for the hi factor.
ELSE IF: If we are EQUAL, then we're done, and break for lunch. We set low = nHi so that when we break out of the FOR loop, we will also exit the WHILE loop.
ELSE: If we get here it's because we're less than the sum, so we need to increment the while loop and reset the hi FOR loop to start again from n (nHi).

Return random number excluding specific range - javascript

I'm trying to return a random number within a specific range while also excluding a specific range within it. I've seen similar questions posed, but I can't get it to work. Here's what I have so far:
var x = xFunction();
function xFunction() {
return parseFloat(Math.round(Math.random() * 2250) / 1000).toFixed(3);
}
if (x > 1.250 && x < 2.001 ) {
// this number is excluded so redo xFunction();
} else {
// this number is acceptable so do some code
}
Any help is appreciated. Thank you so much!
One way to handle this is to look for a random number in the range with the excluded part removed. For example if you were looking for a random number between 0 and 100 with 70-80 removed, you would find a random number between 0 and 90 (removing the 10 from the excluded range). Then if any value falls above 70 you add the excluded range back. This will preserve the appropriate ratio of randomness for each range and you should see results mostly from the lower range with a few from the upper range because that is a larger percentage of the distribution.
(I've moved the division and rounding out of the function just to make it clearer how it works.)
function xFunction(max, exclude) {
let excluded_range = exclude[1] - exclude[0]
let rand = Math.random() * (max - excluded_range)
if (rand > exclude[0]) rand += excluded_range
return rand
}
for (let x = 0; x<10; x++){
let r = xFunction(2250, [1250, 2000])
console.log ((r / 1000).toFixed(3));
}
If you pick a random 0 or 1 and use that to determine the range as recommended in the comments, you will end up with approximately half of the result in the much smaller top range. This will bias your results toward that top range rather than truly finding a random number within the whole range.

How to implement fair division(?) with buffer in javascript?

For the sake of explaining, imagine I have 101 entities. The entities are all people.
In the first entity, it has x amount of "potatoes", I want it to have y potatoes, for now I shall use 950 as an example, intentionally choosing a more awkward number than 1000 for testing.
var personOne = {
...
potatoes: 100
}
I have 100 more of these entities which may have any number of potatoes, but I set a constant buffer that at least 100 for the sake of example again - have to remain with each person.
This means for all of the entities that have over 100, I will be taking some from them - I want this to be shared proportionally across all of them, so that 850 aren't taken from the first two or three, but 10 or 5 taken from all those that are capable of providing such an amount.
Any ideas for an approach?
Optionally: I am using more properties than one "potatoes" property, but I plan on looping through each type and re-using the method that I find to each. I am unsure as to whether this could affect the answer.
Important / Simplified
The one entitiy is pulling "potatoes" from all of the other entities, they are not being distributed evenly across all of them - they are being taken to one entity. I just do not want to do it in a way that is not proportional across all other 100 entities.
This is more taxation than cake-cutting. I am struggling to google for or think of the correct name for the mathematical problem.
Case 1. enough potatoes for everyone to have over 100 of them: put all potatoes together and divide evenly.
Case 2. Not enough potatoes for everyone to have 100. Sum the excess over 100 for those who have + sum all potatoes of those with less than 100, divide the collected potatoes between those with under 100.
(yes, case 2 will imply that some of those under 100 will end with less potatoes than they started. Not fair? Well, maybe you shouldn't protect the 1-percenters that much if there aren't enough potatoes for everybody :) But I digress)
I hope this time i understood the problem. I would calculate the percentage of excess potatoes needed to get the desired amount of potatoes and take that percentage of each participant's excess potatoes, or all if there are not enough total.
Here is some demonstration code to clarify. It is probably overly verbose but should only serve to show the intention anyways. I assumed a very precise potato-cutter is available, as there was no rule specified about what to do about rounding. The outputs are the potatoes of the participants before and after the redistribution. I set NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS to 4 so the output is somewhat readable.
const MAXIMUM_START_POTATOES = 1234;
const MINIMUM_KEPT_POTATOES = 100;
const ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES = 0;
const DESIRED_POTATOES = 950;
const NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS = 4;
//generate NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS entities with random amount of potatoes
let entities = [];
for (let i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS; i++) {
entities.push(Math.floor(Math.random() * (MAXIMUM_START_POTATOES + 1)));
}
console.log(entities);
let required_potatoes = DESIRED_POTATOES - entities[ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES];
if (required_potatoes <= 0) console.log("nothing to do.");
else {
let excess_potatoes = 0;
//Sum excess available potatoes
for (let i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS; i++) {
if (i === ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES) continue;
excess_potatoes += Math.max(0, entities[i] - MINIMUM_KEPT_POTATOES);
}
if (excess_potatoes < required_potatoes) {
//just take all excess potatoes
for (let i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS; i++) {
if (i === ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES) continue;
entities[i] = Math.min(entities[i], MINIMUM_KEPT_POTATOES);
}
entities[ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES] += excess_potatoes;
} else {
//calculate percentage of the excess potatoes that is needed
let percentage_required = required_potatoes / excess_potatoes;
//Take that percentage off every participant's excess potatoes
for (let i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_PARTICIPANTS; i++) {
if (i === ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES) continue;
entities[i] -= Math.max(0, entities[i] - MINIMUM_KEPT_POTATOES) * percentage_required;
}
//Assume double precision is enough for this to never be an issue
entities[ENTITY_TAKING_POTATOES] = DESIRED_POTATOES;
}
console.log(entities);
}

Random number between negative and positive value [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Generating random numbers in Javascript in a specific range?
How can i get a random value between, for example, from -99 to 99, excluding 0?
var num = Math.floor(Math.random()*99) + 1; // this will get a number between 1 and 99;
num *= Math.round(Math.random()) ? 1 : -1; // this will add minus sign in 50% of cases
Altogether
var ranNum = Math.ceil(Math.random() * 99) * (Math.round(Math.random()) ? 1 : -1)
This returns what you want
function getNonZeroRandomNumber(){
var random = Math.floor(Math.random()*199) - 99;
if(random==0) return getNonZeroRandomNumber();
return random;
}
Here's a functional fiddle
EDIT
To contribute for future readers with a little debate happened in the comments which the user #MarkDickinson made a indeed relevant contribution to my first code posted, I've decided to make another fiddle with a fast comparison between using Math.floor() and Math.round() functions to return the value the op wanted.
First Scenario: Using var random = Math.round(Math.random()*198) - 99; (My first suggestion)
function getNonZeroRandomNumberWithMathRound(){
var random = Math.round(Math.random()*198) - 99;
if(random==0) return getNonZeroRandomNumber();
return random;
}
Second scenario: Using var random=Math.floor(Math.random()*199) - 99; (Mark suggestion)
function getNonZeroRandomNumberWithMathFloor(){
var random = Math.floor(Math.random()*199) - 99;
if(random==0) return getNonZeroRandomNumber();
return random;
}
Methodology
Since it's a short debate I've chosen fiddle.net to do the comparison.
The test consists of running the above functions 100.000 times and then retrieving how much times the extreme numbers 99 and -99 would appear against a other number, let's say 33 and -33.
The test will then give a simple output consisting of the percentage of appearances from 99 and -99 and the percentage of appearances of 33 and -33.
It'll be used the Webkit implementation from Safari 6.0.2 to the give the output from this answer but anyone can test with your favourite browser late on fiddle.net
Result from first scenario:
Percentage of normal ocurrences:0.97%
Percentage of extreme ocurrences:0.52%
Percentage of extreme ocurrences relative to normal ocurrences:53.4% // Half the chances indeed
Result from second scenario:
Percentage of normal ocurrences:1.052%
Percentage of extreme ocurrences:0.974%
Percentage of extreme ocurrences relative to normal ocurrences:92% //Closer of a fair result with a minimal standard deviation
The result can be seen here: http://jsfiddle.net/brunovieira/LrXqh/
Here's a generalized solution that will let you set the boundaries, and opt in/out of including the 0.
var pos = 99,
neg = 99,
includeZero = false,
result;
do result = Math.ceil(Math.random() * (pos + neg)) - neg;
while (includeZero === false && result === 0);
The pos and neg values are inclusive.
This way there's no requirement that the positive and negative ranges be balanced.
Or if you're worried about the rerun due to a single excluded value, you can just make the initial range less by one, and add 1 to any result greater than or equal to 0.
var pos = 5,
neg = 5,
result;
result = Math.floor(Math.random() * (pos + neg)) - neg;
result = result < 0 ? result : result + 1;
That last line could be shorter if you prefer:
result += (result >= 0)

How to generate skewed random numbers in Javascript?

Using Javascript, how can I generate random numbers that are skewed towards one end or the other of the distribution? Or ideally an point within the range?
For context: I'm creating a UI that has uses a grid of random grey squares. I'm generating the grey's RGB values using Math.random() but would like to be able to skew the greys to be on average darker or lighter while still having the full range from black to white represented.
(I think this is a similar question to Skewing java random number generation toward a certain number but I'm working with Javascript...)
Any help greatly appreciated.
Raise Math.random() to a power to get a gamma curve - this changes the distribution between 0 and 1, but 0 and 1 stay constant endpoints.
var r= Math.pow(Math.random(), 2);
var colour= 'rgb('+r*255+', '+r*255+', '+r*255+')';
For gamma>1, you will get darker output; for 0<gamma<1 you get lighter. (Here, '2' gives you the x-squared curve; the equidistant lightness would be '0.5' for the square-root curve.)
This seems a little crude and less graceful than #bobince's answer, but what the hell.
//setup
var colours = [], num_colours = 10, skew_to = 255, skew_chance = 20;
//get as many RGB vals as required
for (var i=0; i<num_colours; i++) {
//generate random grey
var this_grey = Math.floor(Math.random() * 256);
//skew it towards the #skew_to endpoint, or leave as-is?
if (Math.floor(Math.random() * 100) >= skew_chance && this_grey != skew_to) {
//skew by random amount (0 - difference between curr val and endpoint)
var skew_amount = Math.floor(Math.random() * Math.abs(this_grey - skew_to));
this_grey += ' (skewed to '+(skew_to < this_grey ? this_grey - skew_amount : this_grey + skew_amount)+')';
}
colours.push(this_grey);
}
console.log(colours);
Essentially it generates random greys then decides, based on probably specified (as a percentage) in skew_chance, whether to skew it or not. (In case you wanted to make this occasional, not constant). If it decides to skew, a random number is then added or subtracted from the grey value (depending on whether the skew endpoint is under or above the current value).
This random number is a number between 0 and the absolute difference between the current value and the endpoint, e.g. if current value is 40, and the endpoint is 100, the number added would be between 0 and 60.
Like I say, #bobince's answer is somewhat, er, more graceful!
[This might be a little different approach.]
This approach deals with getting the number in the following fashion:
random = numberToSkewTo + random(-1,1)*stdDeviation
Where:
numberToSkewTo is the number you want to skew towards.
stdDeviation is the deviation from numberToSkewTo
numberToSkewTo + abs(stdDeviation) <= MAX_NUMBER and
numberToSkewTo - abs(stdDeviation) >= MIN_NUMBER
What the following code does is, it pick a random number around the given number with constantly increasing standard deviations. It returns the average of results.
function skew(skewTo,stdDev){
var rand = (Math.random()*2 - 1) + (Math.random()*2 - 1) + (Math.random()*2 - 1);
return skewTo + rand*stdDev;
}
function getRandom(skewTo){
var difference = Math.min(skewTo-MIN_NUMBER, MAX_NUMBER-skewTo);
var steps = 5;
var total = 0.0;
for(var i=1; i<=steps; i++)
total += skew(skewTo, 1.0*i*difference/steps);
return total/steps
}

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