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Python - "Fast Exponention Algorithm" performance outperformed by "worse" algorithm

Can anyone explain to me how this code:
def pow1(a, n):
DP = [None] * (n+1)
DP[1] = a
i = [1]
while not i[-1] == n:
if(i[-1]*2 <= n):
DP[i[-1]*2] = DP[i[-1]]*DP[i[-1]]
i.append(i[-1]+i[-1])
else:
missing = n-i[-1]
low = 0
high = len(i) - 1
mid = 0
while low <= high:
mid = (high + low) // 2
if i[mid] < missing:
if i[mid+1] > missing:
break
low = mid + 1
elif i[mid] > missing:
high = mid - 1
else:
break
DP[i[-1]+i[mid]] = DP[i[-1]]*DP[i[mid]]
i.append(i[mid]+i[-1])
return DP[n]
out-performs this code:
def pow2(a, n):
res = 1
while (n > 0):
if (n & 1):
res = res * a
a = a * a
n >>= 1
return res
Here is how I check them:
a = 34 # just arbitrary
n = 2487665 # just arbitrary
starttime = timeit.default_timer()
pow1(a, n)
print("pow1: The time difference is :", (
timeit.default_timer() - starttime))
starttime = timeit.default_timer()
pow2(a, n)
print("pow2: The time difference is :",
(timeit.default_timer() - starttime))
This is the result on my MacBook Air m1:
# pow1: The time difference is : 3.71763225
# pow2: The time difference is : 6.091892
As far as I can tell they work very similarly only the first one (pow1) stores all its intermediate results therefore has like O(log(n)) space complexity and then has to find all the required factors(sub-products) to get the final result. So O(log(n)) calculating them all, worst case has to do log(n) binarySearches (again O(log(n)) resulting in a runtime of O( logN*log(logN) ). Where as pow2 essentially never has to search through previous results... so pow2 has Time Complexity: O(logN) and Auxiliary Space: O(1) vs pow1 - Time Complexity: O(logN*logN*logN) and Auxiliary Space: O(logN).
Maybe (probably) I'm missing something essential but I don't see how the algorithm, the hardware (ARM), python or the testing could have this impact.
Also I just realised the space complexity for pow1 is O(n) the way I did it.

Okey so I figured it out. In pow2 (which I implemented from cp-algorithms.com but can also be found on geeksforgeeks.org in python) there is a bug.
The problem is this line gets executed one time too many:
res = 1
while (n > 0):
if (n & 1):
res = res * a
a = a * a #<--- THIS LINE
n >>= 1
return res
that gets called even tough the result has already been calculated, causing the function to do one more unnecessary multiplication, which with big numbers has a big impact. Here would be a very quick fix:
def pow2(a, n):
res = 1
while (n > 0):
if n & 1:
res = res * a
if n == 1:
return res
a = a * a
n >>= 1
return res
New measurements:
# a:34 n:2487665
# pow1(): The time difference is : 3.749621834
# pow2(): The time difference is : 3.072042833
# a**n: The time difference is : 2.119430791000001

Great catch. It's a weakness of while loops that they lead to wasted computations at the bottom of the loop body. Usually it doesn't matter.
Languages like Ada provide an unconditional loop expecting that an internal break (exit in Ada) will be used to leave for this reason.
So fwiw, a cleaner code using this "break in the middle" style would be:
def pow2(a, n):
res = 1
while True:
if (n & 1):
res *= a
n >>= 1
if n == 0:
return res
a *= a
With other algorithms, you might need to guard the loop for the case n = 0. But with this one, that's optional. You could check for that and return 1 explicitly before the loop if desired.
Overall, this avoids a comparison per loop wrt your solution. Maybe with big numbers this is worthwhile.

What do I get from Queue.get() (Python)

Overall question: How do I know what I am getting from a Queue object when I call Queue.get()? How do I sort it, or identify it? Can you get specific items from the Queue and leave others?
Context:
I wanted to learn a little about multi-proccessing (threading?) to make solving a matrix equation more efficient.
To illustrate, below is my working code for solving the matrix equation Ax = b without taking advantage of multiple cores. The solution is [1,1,1].
def jacobi(A, b, x_k):
N = len(x_k)
x_kp1 = np.copy(x_k)
E_rel = 1
iteration = 0
if (N != A.shape[0] or N != A.shape[1]):
raise ValueError('Matrix/vector dimensions do not match.')
while E_rel > ((10**(-14)) * (N**(1/2))):
for i in range(N):
sum = 0
for j in range(N):
if j != i:
sum = sum + A[i,j] * x_k[j]
x_kp1[i] =(1 / A[i,i]) * (b[i] - sum)
E_rel = 0
for n in range(N):
E_rel = E_rel + abs(x_kp1[n] - x_k[n]) / ((abs(x_kp1[n]) + abs(x_k[n])) / 2)
iteration += 1
# print("relative error for this iteration:", E_rel)
if iteration < 11:
print("iteration ", iteration, ":", x_kp1)
x_k = np.copy(x_kp1)
return x_kp1
if __name__ == '__main__':
A = np.matrix([[12.,7,3],[1,5,1],[2,7,-11]])
b = np.array([22.,7,-2])
x = np.array([1.,2,1])
print("Jacobi Method:")
x_1 = jacobi(A, b, x)
Ok, so I wanted to convert this code following this nice example: https://p16.praetorian.com/blog/multi-core-and-distributed-programming-in-python
So I got some code that runs and converges to the correct solution in the same number of iterations! That's really great, but what is the guarantee that this happens? It seems like Queue.get() just grabs whatever result from whatever process finished first (or last?). I was actually very surprised when my code ran, as I expected
for i in range(N):
x_update[i] = q.get(True)
to jumble up the elements of the vector.
Here is my code updated using the multi-processing library:
import numpy as np
import multiprocessing as mu
np.set_printoptions(precision=15)
def Jacobi_step(index, initial_vector, q):
N = len(initial_vector)
sum = 0
for j in range(N):
if j != i:
sum = sum + A[i, j] * initial_vector[j]
# this result is the updated element at given index of our solution vector.
q.put((1 / A[index, index]) * (b[index] - sum))
if __name__ == '__main__':
A = np.matrix([[12.,7,3],[1,5,1],[2,7,-11]])
b = np.array([22.,7,-2])
x = np.array([1.,2,1])
q = mu.Queue()
N = len(x)
x_update = np.copy(x)
p = []
error = 1
iteration = 0
while error > ((10**(-14)) * (N**(1/2))):
# assign a process to each element in the vector x,
# update one element with a single Jacobi step
for i in range(N):
process = mu.Process(target=Jacobi_step(i, x, q))
p.append(process)
process.start()
# fill in the updated vector with each new element aquired by the last step
for i in range(N):
x_update[i] = q.get(True)
# check for convergence
error = 0
for n in range(N):
error = error + abs(x_update[n] - x[n]) / ((abs(x_update[n]) + abs(x[n])) / 2)
p[i].join()
x = np.copy(x_update)
iteration += 1
print("iteration ", iteration, ":", x)
del p[:]

A Queue is first-in-first-out which means the first element inserted is the first element retrieved, in order of insertion.
Since you have no way to control that, I suggest you insert tuples in the Queue, containing the value and some identifying object that can be used to sort/relate to the original computation.
result = (1 / A[index, index]) * (b[index] - sum)
q.put((index, result))
This example puts the index in the Queue together with the result, so that when you .get() later you get the index too and use it to know which computation this is for:
i, x_i = q.get(True)
x_update[i] = x_i
Or something like that.

How to find sum of cubes of the divisors for every number from 1 to input number x in python where x can be very large

Examples,
1.Input=4
Output=111
Explanation,
1 = 1³(divisors of 1)
2 = 1³ + 2³(divisors of 2)
3 = 1³ + 3³(divisors of 3)
4 = 1³ + 2³ + 4³(divisors of 4)
------------------------
sum = 111(output)
1.Input=5
Output=237
Explanation,
1 = 1³(divisors of 1)
2 = 1³ + 2³(divisors of 2)
3 = 1³ + 3³(divisors of 3)
4 = 1³ + 2³ + 4³(divisors of 4)
5 = 1³ + 5³(divisors of 5)
-----------------------------
sum = 237 (output)
x=int(raw_input().strip())
tot=0
for i in range(1,x+1):
for j in range(1,i+1):
if(i%j==0):
tot+=j**3
print tot
Using this code I can find the answer for small number less than one million.
But I want to find the answer for very large numbers. Is there any algorithm
for how to solve it easily for large numbers?

Offhand I don't see a slick way to make this truly efficient, but it's easy to make it a whole lot faster. If you view your examples as matrices, you're summing them a row at a time. This requires, for each i, finding all the divisors of i and summing their cubes. In all, this requires a number of operations proportional to x**2.
You can easily cut that to a number of operations proportional to x, by summing the matrix by columns instead. Given an integer j, how many integers in 1..x are divisible by j? That's easy: there are x//j multiples of j in the range, so divisor j contributes j**3 * (x // j) to the grand total.
def better(x):
return sum(j**3 * (x // j) for j in range(1, x+1))
That runs much faster, but still takes time proportional to x.
There are lower-level tricks you can play to speed that in turn by constant factors, but they still take O(x) time overall. For example, note that x // j == 1 for all j such that x // 2 < j <= x. So about half the terms in the sum can be skipped, replaced by closed-form expressions for a sum of consecutive cubes:
def sum3(x):
"""Return sum(i**3 for i in range(1, x+1))"""
return (x * (x+1) // 2)**2
def better2(x):
result = sum(j**3 * (x // j) for j in range(1, x//2 + 1))
result += sum3(x) - sum3(x//2)
return result
better2() is about twice as fast as better(), but to get faster than O(x) would require deeper insight.
Quicker
Thinking about this in spare moments, I still don't have a truly clever idea. But the last idea I gave can be carried to a logical conclusion: don't just group together divisors with only one multiple in range, but also those with two multiples in range, and three, and four, and ... That leads to better3() below, which does a number of operations roughly proportional to the square root of x:
def better3(x):
result = 0
for i in range(1, x+1):
q1 = x // i
# value i has q1 multiples in range
result += i**3 * q1
# which values have i multiples?
q2 = x // (i+1) + 1
assert x // q1 == i == x // q2
if i < q2:
result += i * (sum3(q1) - sum3(q2 - 1))
if i+1 >= q2: # this becomes true when i reaches roughly sqrt(x)
break
return result
Of course O(sqrt(x)) is an enormous improvement over the original O(x**2), but for very large arguments it's still impractical. For example better3(10**6) appears to complete instantly, but better3(10**12) takes a few seconds, and better3(10**16) is time for a coffee break ;-)
Note: I'm using Python 3. If you're using Python 2, use xrange() instead of range().
One more
better4() has the same O(sqrt(x)) time behavior as better3(), but does the summations in a different order that allows for simpler code and fewer calls to sum3(). For "large" arguments, it's about 50% faster than better3() on my box.
def better4(x):
result = 0
for i in range(1, x+1):
d = x // i
if d >= i:
# d is the largest divisor that appears `i` times, and
# all divisors less than `d` also appear at least that
# often. Account for one occurence of each.
result += sum3(d)
else:
i -= 1
lastd = x // i
# We already accounted for i occurrences of all divisors
# < lastd, and all occurrences of divisors >= lastd.
# Account for the rest.
result += sum(j**3 * (x // j - i)
for j in range(1, lastd))
break
return result
It may be possible to do better by extending the algorithm in "A Successive Approximation Algorithm for Computing the Divisor Summatory Function". That takes O(cube_root(x)) time for the possibly simpler problem of summing the number of divisors. But it's much more involved, and I don't care enough about this problem to pursue it myself ;-)
Subtlety
There's a subtlety in the math that's easy to miss, so I'll spell it out, but only as it pertains to better4().
After d = x // i, the comment claims that d is the largest divisor that appears i times. But is that true? The actual number of times d appears is x // d, which we did not compute. How do we know that x // d in fact equals i?
That's the purpose of the if d >= i: guarding that comment. After d = x // i we know that
x == d*i + r
for some integer r satisfying 0 <= r < i. That's essentially what floor division means. But since d >= i is also known (that's what the if test ensures), it must also be the case that 0 <= r < d. And that's how we know x // d is i.
This can break down when d >= i is not true, which is why a different method needs to be used then. For example, if x == 500 and i == 51, d (x // i) is 9, but it's certainly not the case that 9 is the largest divisor that appears 51 times. In fact, 9 appears 500 // 9 == 55 times. While for positive real numbers
d == x/i
if and only if
i == x/d
that's not always so for floor division. But, as above, the first does imply the second if we also know that d >= i.
Just for Fun
better5() rewrites better4() for about another 10% speed gain. The real pedagogical point is to show that it's easy to compute all the loop limits in advance. Part of the point of the odd code structure above is that it magically returns 0 for a 0 input without needing to test for that. better5() gives up on that:
def isqrt(n):
"Return floor(sqrt(n)) for int n > 0."
g = 1 << ((n.bit_length() + 1) >> 1)
d = n // g
while d < g:
g = (d + g) >> 1
d = n // g
return g
def better5(x):
assert x > 0
u = isqrt(x)
v = x // u
return (sum(map(sum3, (x // d for d in range(1, u+1)))) +
sum(x // i * i**3 for i in range(1, v)) -
u * sum3(v-1))

def sum_divisors(n):
sum = 0
i = 0
for i in range (1, n) :
if n % i == 0 and n != 0 :
sum = sum + i
# Return the sum of all divisors of n, not including n
return sum
print(sum_divisors(0))
# 0
print(sum_divisors(3)) # Should sum of 1
# 1
print(sum_divisors(36)) # Should sum of 1+2+3+4+6+9+12+18
# 55
print(sum_divisors(102)) # Should be sum of 2+3+6+17+34+51
# 114

Optimise the solution to Project Euler 12 (Python)

I have the following code for Project Euler Problem 12. However, it takes a very long time to execute. Does anyone have any suggestions for speeding it up?
n = input("Enter number: ")
def genfact(n):
t = []
for i in xrange(1, n+1):
if n%i == 0:
t.append(i)
return t
print "Numbers of divisors: ", len(genfact(n))
print
m = input("Enter the number of triangle numbers to check: ")
print
for i in xrange (2, m+2):
a = sum(xrange(i))
b = len(genfact(a))
if b > 500:
print a
For n, I enter an arbitrary number such as 6 just to check whether it indeed returns the length of the list of the number of factors.
For m, I enter entered 80 000 000
It works relatively quickly for small numbers. If I enter b > 50 ; it returns 28 for a, which is correct.

My answer here isn't pretty or elegant, it is still brute force. But, it simplifies the problem space a little and terminates successfully in less than 10 seconds.
Getting factors of n:
Like #usethedeathstar mentioned, it is possible to test for factors only up to n/2. However, we can do better by testing only up to the square root of n:
let n = 36
=> factors(n) : (1x36, 2x18, 3x12, 4x9, 6x6, 9x4, 12x3, 18x2, 36x1)
As you can see, it loops around after 6 (the square root of 36). We also don't need to explicitly return the factors, just find out how many there are... so just count them off with a generator inside of sum():
import math
def get_factors(n):
return sum(2 for i in range(1, round(math.sqrt(n)+1)) if not n % i)
Testing the triangular numbers
I have used a generator function to yield the triangular numbers:
def generate_triangles(limit):
l = 1
while l <= limit:
yield sum(range(l + 1))
l += 1
And finally, start testing:
def test_triangles():
triangles = generate_triangles(100000)
for i in triangles:
if get_factors(i) > 499:
return i
Running this with the profiler, it completes in less than 10 seconds:
$ python3 -m cProfile euler12.py
361986 function calls in 8.006 seconds
The BIGGEST time saving here is get_factors(n) testing only up to the square root of n - this makes it heeeaps quicker and you save heaps of memory overhead by not generating a list of factors.
As I said, it still isn't pretty - I am sure there are more elegant solutions. But, it fits the bill of being faster :)

I got my answer to run in 1.8 seconds with Python.
import time
from math import sqrt
def count_divisors(n):
d = {}
count = 1
while n % 2 == 0:
n = n / 2
try:
d[2] += 1
except KeyError:
d[2] = 1
for i in range(3, int(sqrt(n+1)), 2):
while n % i == 0 and i != n:
n = n / i
try:
d[i] += 1
except KeyError:
d[i] = 1
d[n] = 1
for _,v in d.items():
count = count * (v + 1)
return count
def tri_number(num):
next = 1 + int(sqrt(1+(8 * num)))
return num + (next/2)
def main():
i = 1
while count_divisors(i) < 500:
i = tri_number(i)
return i
start = time.time()
answer = main()
elapsed = (time.time() - start)
print("result %s returned in %s seconds." % (answer, elapsed))
Here is the output showing the timedelta and correct answer:
$ python ./project012.py
result 76576500 returned in 1.82238006592 seconds.
Factoring
For counting the divisors, I start by initializing an empty dictionary and a counter. For each factor found, I create key of d[factor] with value of 1 if it does not exist, otherwise, I increment the value d[factor].
For example, if we counted the factors 100, we would see d = {25: 1, 2: 2}
The first while loop, I factor out all 2's, dividing n by 2 each time. Next, I begin factoring at 3, skipping two each time (since we factored all even numbers already), and stopping once I get to the square root of n+1.
We stop at the square_root of n because if there's a pair of factors with one of the numbers bigger than square_root of n, the other of the pair has to be less than 10. If the smaller one doesn't exist, there is no matching larger factor.
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1343171/why-only-square-root-approach-to-check-number-is-prime
while n % 2 == 0:
n = n / 2
try:
d[2] += 1
except KeyError:
d[2] = 1
for i in range(3, int(sqrt(n+1)), 2):
while n % i == 0 and i != n:
n = n / i
try:
d[i] += 1
except KeyError:
d[i] = 1
d[n] = 1
Now that I have gotten each factor, and added it to the dictionary, we have to add the last factor (which is just n).
Counting Divisors
Now that the dictionary is complete, we loop through each of the items, and apply the following formula: d(n)=(a+1)(b+1)(c+1)...
https://www.wikihow.com/Determine-the-Number-of-Divisors-of-an-Integer
All this formula means is taking all of the counts of each factor, adding 1, then multiplying them together. Take 100 for example, which has factors 25, 2, and 2. We would calculate d(n)=(a+1)(b+1) = (1+1)(2+1) = (2)(3) = 6 total divisors
for _,v in d.items():
count = count * (v + 1)
return count
Calculate Triangle Numbers
Now, taking a look at tri_number(), you can see that I opted to calculate the next triangle number in a sequence without manually adding each whole number together (saving me millions of operations). Instead I used T(n) = n (n+1) / 2
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/runsums/triNbProof.html
We are providing a whole number to the function as an argument, so we need to solve for n, which is going to be the whole number to add next. Once we have the next number (n), we simply add that single number to num and return
S=n(n+1)2
S=n2+n2
2S=n2+n
n2+n−2S=0
At this point, we use the quadratic formula for : ax2+bx+c=0.
n=−b±√b2−4ac / 2a
n=−1±√1−4(1)(−2S) / 2
n=−1±√1+8S / 2
https://socratic.org/questions/how-do-you-solve-for-n-in-s-n-n-1-2
So all tri_number() does is evaluate n=1+√1+8S / 2 (we ignore the negative equation here). The answer that is returned is the next triangle number in the sequence.
def tri_number(num):
next = 1 + int(sqrt(1+(8 * num)))
return num + (next/2)
Main Loop
Finally, we can look at main(). We start at whole number 1. We count the divisor of 1. If it is less than 500, we get the next triangle number, then try again and again until we get a number with > 500 divisors.
def main():
i = 1
while count_divisors(i) < 500:
i = tri_number(i)
return i
I am sure there are additional ways to optimize but I am not smart enough to understand those ways. If you find any better ways to optimize python, let me know! I originally solved project 12 in Golang, and that run in 25 milliseconds!
$ go run project012.go
76576500
2018/07/12 01:56:31 TIME: main() took 23.581558ms

one of the hints i can give is
def genfact(n):
t = []
for i in xrange(1, n+1):
if n%i == 0:
t.append(i)
return t
change that to
def genfact(n):
t=[]
for i in xrange(1,numpy.sqrt(n)+1):
if(n%i==0):
t.append(i)
t.apend(n/i)
since if a is a divisor than so is b=n/a, since a*b=a*n/b=n, That should help a part already (not sure if in your case a square is possible, but if so, add another case to exclude adding the same number twice)
You could devise a recursive thing too, (like if it is something like for 28, you get 1,28,2,14 and at the moment you are at knowing 14, you put in something to actually remember the divisors of 14 (memoize), than check if they are alraedy in the list, and if not, add them to the list, together with 28/d for each of the divisors of 14, and at the end just take out the duplicates
If you think my first answer is still not fast enough, ask for more, and i will check how it would be done to solve it faster with some more tricks (could probably make use of erastothenes sieve or so too, and some other tricks could be thought up as well if you would wish to really blow up the problem to huge proportions, like to check the first one with over 10k divisors or so)

while True:
c=0
n=1
m=1
for i in range(1,n+1):
if n%i==0:
c=c+1
m=m+1
n=m*(m+1)/2
if c>500:
break
print n

this is not my code but it is so optimized.
source: http://code.jasonbhill.com/sage/project-euler-problem-12/
import time
def num_divisors(n):
if n % 2 == 0: n = n / 2
divisors = 1
count = 0
while n % 2 == 0:
count += 1
n = n / 2
divisors = divisors * (count + 1)
p = 3
while n != 1:
count = 0
while n % p == 0:
count += 1
n = n / p
divisors = divisors * (count + 1)
p += 2
return divisors
def find_triangular_index(factor_limit):
n = 1
lnum, rnum = num_divisors(n), num_divisors(n + 1)
while lnum * rnum < 500:
n += 1
lnum, rnum = rnum, num_divisors(n + 1)
return n
start = time.time()
index = find_triangular_index(500)
triangle = (index * (index + 1)) / 2
elapsed = (time.time() - start)
print("result %s returned in %s seconds." % (triangle, elapsed))

Factorial doesn't output an integer

I'm not a very experienced programmer but I just wrote this in Python to try and find e, using the definition that e is the sum of 1/0! + 1/1! + 1/2! etc...
The problem I'm having is def factorial doesn't output an integer. I realize it wouldn't given how it's written but I'm not sure how I can make it. total is what I would want outputted as an int from def factorial.
e = 0
def factorial(m):
n = m - 1
total = 1
if n > 0:
total = m
while n > 0:
total = total * n
n = n - 1
for w in range(0,100):
s = factorial(w)
e = e + ( 1 / s )
print(e)

def factorial(m):
n = m - 1
total = 1
if n > 0:
total = m
while n > 0:
total = total * n
n = n - 1
return total
EDIT: The problem is that, in order to get information from factorial, you have to use a return statement. Anything after the return is evaluated, and used as the value of s in s = factorial(w).

The code by Feffernoose works. But to improve the performance in your case, you would better use the "yield" statement to build a iterable object.
e = 0
def factorial(m):
assert(m>1)
current = 0
total = 1
while current<=m:
yield total
current += 1
total *= current
for w in factorial(100):
e = e + ( 1 / w )
print(e)
Update: in the solution with "return", you approximately need O(n*n) time for the factorial value computation. But with "yield", you only need O(n).