LeetCode 881 - Boats to Save People


https://leetcode.com/problems/boats-to-save-people/
The i-th person has weight people[i], and each boat can carry a maximum weight of limit.
Each boat carries at most 2 people at the same time, provided the sum of the weight of those people is at most limit.
Return the minimum number of boats to carry every given person.  (It is guaranteed each person can be carried by a boat.)

Example 1:
Input: people = [1,2], limit = 3
Output: 1
Explanation: 1 boat (1, 2)
Example 2:
Input: people = [3,2,2,1], limit = 3
Output: 3
Explanation: 3 boats (1, 2), (2) and (3)

Approach 1: Greedy (Two Pointer)

If the heaviest person can share a boat with the lightest person, then do so. Otherwise, the heaviest person can't pair with anyone, so they get their own boat.
The reason this works is because if the lightest person can pair with anyone, they might as well pair with the heaviest person.
Algorithm
Let people[i] to the currently lightest person, and people[j] to the heaviest.
Then, as described above, if the heaviest person can share a boat with the lightest person (if people[j] + people[i] <= limit) then do so; otherwise, the heaviest person sits in their own boat.

  public int numRescueBoats(int[] people, int limit) {
    Arrays.sort(people);
    int i = 0, j = people.length - 1;
    int ans = 0;

    while (i <= j) {
      ans++;
      if (people[i] + people[j] <= limit)
        i++;
      j--;
    }

    return ans;

  }

https://leetcode.com/problems/boats-to-save-people/discuss/156855/6-lines-Java-O(nlogn)-code-sorting-%2B-greedy-with-greedy-algorithm-proof.
Push from two ends of the sorted array people.
  1. if the 2 ends, people[lo] and people[hi], can fit in a boat, move the 2 ends;
  2. otherwise move only the high end, and the low end stays.
    In other words: always move the high end, but the low end depends on if it can cram into a boat with the high end.
  3. repeat the above till the 2 ends meet.
    public int numRescueBoats(int[] people, int limit) {
        Arrays.sort(people);
        int ans = 0; 
        for (int hi = people.length - 1, lo = 0; hi >= lo; --hi, ++ans) { // high end always moves
            if (people[lo] + people[hi] <= limit) { ++lo; } // low end moves only if it can fit in a boat with high end.
        }
        return ans;
    }
Update:
Since some people challenge or have questions about the greedy algorithm, I provide the proof as follows.
Proof of the correctness of the greedy algorithm:
Denote S as one of the optimal solutions, and O as our algorithm output solution.
1. Greedy choice property.
Starting from the heaviest person hi, there are 2 possible cases:
a) if hi can NOT fit in a boat with any other, then both in S and Ohi is in a boat alone. Apparently, our first step is optimal and the greedy choice property holds;
b) if hi CAN fit in a boat with at least 1 other person, then
in Ohi and lightest person lo together must be in same boat, according to our algorithm.
In S, if they are also in same boat, then our first step is optimal and the greedy choice property holds;
If hi and lo are not in same boat, say in boat-hi and boat-lo respectively, then we can swap hi with lo's boat mate, say m. Obviously, m <= hi, therefore the swap is feasible. Since the swap results no extra boat(s), a new optimal solution T is obtained. That indicates our first step--put hi and lo into same boat--is an optimal step and and greedy choice property also holds.
2.optimal substructure property.
Let P be the original problem at scale n, where n = people.length. From the above 1, after first step, we have a subproblem P' at scale n'(n' = n - 1 or n - 2, depends on hi in a boat alone or not). Similary, we have hi' and lo' and can do next step as in 1.
Since in 1 we proved T is an optimal solution, and the solution of P', say O', contained within T is also an optimal one. Thus the the problem has the optimal substructure property.


Combine 1 and 2, we complete the proof.
https://leetcode.com/problems/boats-to-save-people/discuss/156740/C%2B%2BJavaPython-Two-Pointers


    public int numRescueBoats(int[] people, int limit) {
        Arrays.sort(people);
        int i, j;
        for (i = 0, j = people.length - 1; i <= j; --j)
            if (people[i] + people[j] <= limit) ++i;
        return people.length - 1 - j;
    }

Labels

LeetCode (1432) GeeksforGeeks (1122) LeetCode - Review (1067) Review (882) Algorithm (668) to-do (609) Classic Algorithm (270) Google Interview (237) Classic Interview (222) Dynamic Programming (220) DP (186) Bit Algorithms (145) POJ (141) Math (137) Tree (132) LeetCode - Phone (129) EPI (122) Cracking Coding Interview (119) DFS (115) Difficult Algorithm (115) Lintcode (115) Different Solutions (110) Smart Algorithm (104) Binary Search (96) BFS (91) HackerRank (90) Binary Tree (86) Hard (79) Two Pointers (78) Stack (76) Company-Facebook (75) BST (72) Graph Algorithm (72) Time Complexity (69) Greedy Algorithm (68) Interval (63) Company - Google (62) Geometry Algorithm (61) Interview Corner (61) LeetCode - Extended (61) Union-Find (60) Trie (58) Advanced Data Structure (56) List (56) Priority Queue (53) Codility (52) ComProGuide (50) LeetCode Hard (50) Matrix (50) Bisection (48) Segment Tree (48) Sliding Window (48) USACO (46) Space Optimization (45) Company-Airbnb (41) Greedy (41) Mathematical Algorithm (41) Tree - Post-Order (41) ACM-ICPC (40) Algorithm Interview (40) Data Structure Design (40) Graph (40) Backtracking (39) Data Structure (39) Jobdu (39) Random (39) Codeforces (38) Knapsack (38) LeetCode - DP (38) Recursive Algorithm (38) String Algorithm (38) TopCoder (38) Sort (37) Introduction to Algorithms (36) Pre-Sort (36) Beauty of Programming (35) Must Known (34) Binary Search Tree (33) Follow Up (33) prismoskills (33) Palindrome (32) Permutation (31) Array (30) Google Code Jam (30) HDU (30) Array O(N) (29) Logic Thinking (29) Monotonic Stack (29) Puzzles (29) Code - Detail (27) Company-Zenefits (27) Microsoft 100 - July (27) Queue (27) Binary Indexed Trees (26) TreeMap (26) to-do-must (26) 1point3acres (25) GeeksQuiz (25) Merge Sort (25) Reverse Thinking (25) hihocoder (25) Company - LinkedIn (24) Hash (24) High Frequency (24) Summary (24) Divide and Conquer (23) Proof (23) Game Theory (22) Topological Sort (22) Lintcode - Review (21) Tree - Modification (21) Algorithm Game (20) CareerCup (20) Company - Twitter (20) DFS + Review (20) DP - Relation (20) Brain Teaser (19) DP - Tree (19) Left and Right Array (19) O(N) (19) Sweep Line (19) UVA (19) DP - Bit Masking (18) LeetCode - Thinking (18) KMP (17) LeetCode - TODO (17) Probabilities (17) Simulation (17) String Search (17) Codercareer (16) Company-Uber (16) Iterator (16) Number (16) O(1) Space (16) Shortest Path (16) itint5 (16) DFS+Cache (15) Dijkstra (15) Euclidean GCD (15) Heap (15) LeetCode - Hard (15) Majority (15) Number Theory (15) Rolling Hash (15) Tree Traversal (15) Brute Force (14) Bucket Sort (14) DP - Knapsack (14) DP - Probability (14) Difficult (14) Fast Power Algorithm (14) Pattern (14) Prefix Sum (14) TreeSet (14) Algorithm Videos (13) Amazon Interview (13) Basic Algorithm (13) Codechef (13) Combination (13) Computational Geometry (13) DP - Digit (13) LCA (13) LeetCode - DFS (13) Linked List (13) Long Increasing Sequence(LIS) (13) Math-Divisible (13) Reservoir Sampling (13) mitbbs (13) Algorithm - How To (12) Company - Microsoft (12) DP - Interval (12) DP - Multiple Relation (12) DP - Relation Optimization (12) LeetCode - Classic (12) Level Order Traversal (12) Prime (12) Pruning (12) Reconstruct Tree (12) Thinking (12) X Sum (12) AOJ (11) Bit Mask (11) Company-Snapchat (11) DP - Space Optimization (11) Dequeue (11) Graph DFS (11) MinMax (11) Miscs (11) Princeton (11) Quick Sort (11) Stack - Tree (11) 尺取法 (11) 挑战程序设计竞赛 (11) Coin Change (10) DFS+Backtracking (10) Facebook Hacker Cup (10) Fast Slow Pointers (10) HackerRank Easy (10) Interval Tree (10) Limited Range (10) Matrix - Traverse (10) Monotone Queue (10) SPOJ (10) Starting Point (10) States (10) Stock (10) Theory (10) Tutorialhorizon (10) Kadane - Extended (9) Mathblog (9) Max-Min Flow (9) Maze (9) Median (9) O(32N) (9) Quick Select (9) Stack Overflow (9) System Design (9) Tree - Conversion (9) Use XOR (9) Book Notes (8) Company-Amazon (8) DFS+BFS (8) DP - States (8) Expression (8) Longest Common Subsequence(LCS) (8) One Pass (8) Quadtrees (8) Traversal Once (8) Trie - Suffix (8) 穷竭搜索 (8) Algorithm Problem List (7) All Sub (7) Catalan Number (7) Cycle (7) DP - Cases (7) Facebook Interview (7) Fibonacci Numbers (7) Flood fill (7) Game Nim (7) Graph BFS (7) HackerRank Difficult (7) Hackerearth (7) Inversion (7) Kadane’s Algorithm (7) Manacher (7) Morris Traversal (7) Multiple Data Structures (7) Normalized Key (7) O(XN) (7) Radix Sort (7) Recursion (7) Sampling (7) Suffix Array (7) Tech-Queries (7) Tree - Serialization (7) Tree DP (7) Trie - Bit (7) 蓝桥杯 (7) Algorithm - Brain Teaser (6) BFS - Priority Queue (6) BFS - Unusual (6) Classic Data Structure Impl (6) DP - 2D (6) DP - Monotone Queue (6) DP - Unusual (6) DP-Space Optimization (6) Dutch Flag (6) How To (6) Interviewstreet (6) Knapsack - MultiplePack (6) Local MinMax (6) MST (6) Minimum Spanning Tree (6) Number - Reach (6) Parentheses (6) Pre-Sum (6) Probability (6) Programming Pearls (6) Rabin-Karp (6) Reverse (6) Scan from right (6) Schedule (6) Stream (6) Subset Sum (6) TSP (6) Xpost (6) n00tc0d3r (6) reddit (6) AI (5) Abbreviation (5) Anagram (5) Art Of Programming-July (5) Assumption (5) Bellman Ford (5) Big Data (5) Code - Solid (5) Code Kata (5) Codility-lessons (5) Coding (5) Company - WMware (5) Convex Hull (5) Crazyforcode (5) DFS - Multiple (5) DFS+DP (5) DP - Multi-Dimension (5) DP-Multiple Relation (5) Eulerian Cycle (5) Graph - Unusual (5) Graph Cycle (5) Hash Strategy (5) Immutability (5) Java (5) LogN (5) Manhattan Distance (5) Matrix Chain Multiplication (5) N Queens (5) Pre-Sort: Index (5) Quick Partition (5) Quora (5) Randomized Algorithms (5) Resources (5) Robot (5) SPFA(Shortest Path Faster Algorithm) (5) Shuffle (5) Sieve of Eratosthenes (5) Strongly Connected Components (5) Subarray Sum (5) Sudoku (5) Suffix Tree (5) Swap (5) Threaded (5) Tree - Creation (5) Warshall Floyd (5) Word Search (5) jiuzhang (5)

Popular Posts