8 Queens on a chessboard | PYTHON | Memory Error - python

I came across this question where 8 queens should be placed on a chessboard such that none can kill each other.This is how I tried to solve it:
import itertools
def allAlive(position):
qPosition=[]
for i in range(8):
qPosition.append(position[2*i:(2*i)+2])
hDel=list(qPosition) #Horizontal
for i in range(8):
a=hDel[0]
del hDel[0]
l=len(hDel)
for j in range(l):
if a[:1]==hDel[j][:1]:
return False
vDel=list(qPosition) #Vertical
for i in range(8):
a=vDel[0]
l=len(vDel)
for j in range(l):
if a[1:2]==vDel[j][1:2]:
return False
cDel=list(qPosition) #Cross
for i in range(8):
a=cDel[0]
l=len(cDel)
for j in range(l):
if abs(ord(a[:1])-ord(cDel[j][:1]))==1 and abs(int(a[1:2])-int(cDel[j][1:2]))==1:
return False
return True
chessPositions=['A1','A2','A3','A4','A5','A6','A7','A8','B1','B2','B3','B4','B5','B6','B7','B8','C1','C2','C3','C4','C5','C6','C7','C8','D1','D2','D3','D4','D5','D6','D7','D8','E1','E2','E3','E4','E5','E6','E7','E8','F1','F2','F3','F4','F5','F6','F7','F8','G1','G2','G3','G4','G5','G6','G7','G8','H1','H2','H3','H4','H5','H6','H7','H8']
qPositions=[''.join(p) for p in itertools.combinations(chessPositions,8)]
for i in qPositions:
if allAlive(i)==True:
print(i)
Traceback (most recent call last):
qPositions=[''.join(p) for p in itertools.combinations(chessPositions,8)]
MemoryError
I'm still a newbie.How can I overcome this error?Or is there any better way to solve this problem?

What you are trying to do is impossible ;)!
qPositions=[''.join(p) for p in itertools.combinations(chessPositions,8)]
means that you will get a list with length 64 choose 8 = 4426165368, since len(chessPositions) = 64, which you cannot store in memory. Why not? Combining what I stated in the comments and #augray in his answer, the result of above operation would be a list which would take
(64 choose 8) * 2 * 8 bytes ~ 66GB
of RAM, since it will have 64 choose 8 elements, each element will have 8 substrings like 'A1' and each substring like this consists of 2 character. One character takes 1 byte.
You have to find another way. I am not answering to that because that is your job. The n-queens problem falls into dynamic programming. I suggest you to google 'n queens problem python' and search for an answer. Then try to understand the code and dynamic programming.
I did searching for you, take a look at this video. As suggested by #Jean François-Fabre, backtracking. Your job is now to watch the video once, twice,... as long as you don't understand the solution to problem. Then open up your favourite editor (mine is Vi :D) and code it down!

This is one case where it's important to understand the "science" (or more accurately, math) part of computer science as much as it is important to understand the nuts and bolts of programming.
From the documentation for itertools.combinations, we see that the number of items returned is n! / r! / (n-r)! where n is the length of the input collection (in your case the number of chess positions, 64) and r is the length of the subsequences you want returned (in your case 8). As #campovski has pointed out, this results in 4,426,165,368. Each returned subsequence will consist of 8*2 characters, each of which is a byte (not to mention the overhead of the other data structures to hold these and calculate the answer). Each character is 1 byte, so in total, just counting the memory consumption of the resulting subsequences gives 4,426,165,368*2*8=70818645888. dividing this by 1024^3 gives the number of Gigs of memory held by these subsequences, about 66GB.
I'm assuming you don't have that much memory :-) . Calculating the answer to this question will require a well thought out algorithm, not just "brute force". I recommend doing some research on the problem- Wikipedia looks like a good place to start.

As the other answers stated you cant get every combination to fit in memory, and you shouldn't use brute force because the speed will be slow. However, if you want to use brute force, you could constrain the problem, and eliminate common rows and columns and check the diagonal
from itertools import permutations
#All possible letters
letters = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h']
#All possible numbers
numbers = [str(i) for i in range(1,len(letters)+1)]
#All possible permutations given rows != to eachother and columns != to eachother
r = [zip(letters, p) for p in permutations(numbers,8)]
#Formatted for your function
points = [''.join([''.join(z) for z in b]) for b in r]
Also as a note, this line of code attempts to first find all of the combinations, then feed your function, which is a waste of memory.
qPositions=[''.join(p) for p in itertools.combinations(chessPositions,8)]
If you decided you do want to use a brute force method, it is possible. Just modify the code for itertools combinations. Remove the yield and return and just feed your check function one at a time.

Related

Best way to create a loop for multiplying a matrix by every one of its elements, then summing the results

very new to Python so apologies for the lack of vocabulary/knowledge. I would like to know if there is a better way to achieve what the code below provides. Using the loop I have made, I can generate and append all of the matrices/arrays formed from multiplying matrix A by each and every element within A. The last line of code then sums all of the elements in this array of arrays and prints out the result I want.
The problem is, when I get to about d = 600, I get SIGKILL errors, due to a lack of memory on my computer.
I have considered the mathematics behind it, which included breaking the summation into parts that dealt with different values of indices, but nothing seems to speed it up significantly.
This may be purely a memory-based issue, but I thought I would ask in case there are any Python/code based tips that could help. The code is as follows:
A = numpy.random.randint(0, 4, size=(d, d))
All = []
for n in range(0, d):
for m in range(0, d):
All.append(A*(A[n,m]))
print(numpy.sum(All))
So overall, I achieve the correct result, but due to the large size of the matrices and the number of multiplications, I cannot achieve the required d = 2000 I am looking for without a memory error. Thanks in advance.
You don't need to do looping here and building a new list if all you want is the total sum... what you're doing mathematically comes down to:
total = A.sum() ** 2

Sum of primes below 2,000,000 in python

I am attempting problem 10 of Project Euler, which is the summation of all primes below 2,000,000. I have tried implementing the Sieve of Erasthotenes using Python, and the code I wrote works perfectly for numbers below 10,000.
However, when I attempt to find the summation of primes for bigger numbers, the code takes too long to run (finding the sum of primes up to 100,000 took 315 seconds). The algorithm clearly needs optimization.
Yes, I have looked at other posts on this website, like Fastest way to list all primes below N, but the solutions there had very little explanation as to how the code worked (I am still a beginner programmer) so I was not able to actually learn from them.
Can someone please help me optimize my code, and clearly explain how it works along the way?
Here is my code:
primes_below_number = 2000000 # number to find summation of all primes below number
numbers = (range(1, primes_below_number + 1, 2)) # creates a list excluding even numbers
pos = 0 # index position
sum_of_primes = 0 # total sum
number = numbers[pos]
while number < primes_below_number and pos < len(numbers) - 1:
pos += 1
number = numbers[pos] # moves to next prime in list numbers
sum_of_primes += number # adds prime to total sum
num = number
while num < primes_below_number:
num += number
if num in numbers[:]:
numbers.remove(num) # removes multiples of prime found
print sum_of_primes + 2
As I said before, I am new to programming, therefore a thorough explanation of any complicated concepts would be deeply appreciated. Thank you.
As you've seen, there are various ways to implement the Sieve of Erasthotenes in Python that are more efficient than your code. I don't want to confuse you with fancy code, but I can show how to speed up your code a fair bit.
Firstly, searching a list isn't fast, and removing elements from a list is even slower. However, Python provides a set type which is quite efficient at performing both of those operations (although it does chew up a bit more RAM than a simple list). Happily, it's easy to modify your code to use a set instead of a list.
Another optimization is that we don't have to check for prime factors all the way up to primes_below_number, which I've renamed to hi in the code below. It's sufficient to just go to the square root of hi, since if a number is composite it must have a factor less than or equal to its square root.
We don't need to keep a running total of the sum of the primes. It's better to do that at the end using Python's built-in sum() function, which operates at C speed, so it's much faster than doing the additions one by one at Python speed.
# number to find summation of all primes below number
hi = 2000000
# create a set excluding even numbers
numbers = set(xrange(3, hi + 1, 2))
for number in xrange(3, int(hi ** 0.5) + 1):
if number not in numbers:
#number must have been removed because it has a prime factor
continue
num = number
while num < hi:
num += number
if num in numbers:
# Remove multiples of prime found
numbers.remove(num)
print 2 + sum(numbers)
You should find that this code runs in a a few seconds; it takes around 5 seconds on my 2GHz single-core machine.
You'll notice that I've moved the comments so that they're above the line they're commenting on. That's the preferred style in Python since we prefer short lines, and also inline comments tend to make the code look cluttered.
There's another small optimization that can be made to the inner while loop, but I let you figure that out for yourself. :)
First, removing numbers from the list will be very slow. Instead of this, make a list
primes = primes_below_number * True
primes[0] = False
primes[1] = False
Now in your loop, when you find a prime p, change primes[k*p] to False for all suitable k. (You wouldn't actually do multiply, you'd continually add p, of course.)
At the end,
primes = [n for n i range(primes_below_number) if primes[n]]
This should be a great deal faster.
Second, you can stop looking once your find a prime greater than the square root of primes_below_number, since a composite number must have a prime factor that doesn't exceed its square root.
Try using numpy, should make it faster. Replace range by xrange, it may help you.
Here's an optimization for your code:
import itertools
primes_below_number = 2000000
numbers = list(range(3, primes_below_number, 2))
pos = 0
while pos < len(numbers) - 1:
number = numbers[pos]
numbers = list(
itertools.chain(
itertools.islice(numbers, 0, pos + 1),
itertools.ifilter(
lambda n: n % number != 0,
itertools.islice(numbers, pos + 1, len(numbers))
)
)
)
pos += 1
sum_of_primes = sum(numbers) + 2
print sum_of_primes
The optimization here is because:
Removed the sum to outside the loop.
Instead of removing elements from a list we can just create another one, memory is not an issue here (I hope).
When creating the new list we create it by chaining two parts, the first part is everything before the current number (we already checked those), and the second part is everything after the current number but only if they are not divisible by the current number.
Using itertools can make things faster since we'd be using iterators instead of looping through the whole list more than once.
Another solution would be to not remove parts of the list but disable them like #saulspatz said.
And here's the fastest way I was able to find: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sum+of+all+primes+below+2+million 😁
Update
Here is the boolean method:
import itertools
primes_below_number = 2000000
numbers = [v % 2 != 0 for v in xrange(primes_below_number)]
numbers[0] = False
numbers[1] = False
numbers[2] = True
number = 3
while number < primes_below_number:
n = number * 3 # We already excluded even numbers
while n < primes_below_number:
numbers[n] = False
n += number
number += 1
while number < primes_below_number and not numbers[number]:
number += 1
sum_of_numbers = sum(itertools.imap(lambda index_n: index_n[1] and index_n[0] or 0, enumerate(numbers)))
print(sum_of_numbers)
This executes in seconds (took 3 seconds on my 2.4GHz machine).
Instead of storing a list of numbers, you can instead store an array of boolean values. This use of a bitmap can be thought of as a way to implement a set, which works well for dense sets (there aren't big gaps between the values of members).
An answer on a recent python sieve question uses this implementation python-style. It turns out a lot of people have implemented a sieve, or something they thought was a sieve, and then come on SO to ask why it was slow. :P Look at the related-questions sidebar from some of them if you want more reading material.
Finding the element that holds the boolean that says whether a number is in the set or not is easy and extremely fast. array[i] is a boolean value that's true if i is in the set, false if not. The memory address can be computed directly from i with a single addition.
(I'm glossing over the fact that an array of boolean might be stored with a whole byte for each element, rather than the more efficient implementation of using every single bit for a different element. Any decent sieve will use a bitmap.)
Removing a number from the set is as simple as setting array[i] = false, regardless of the previous value. No searching, not comparison, no tracking of what happened, just one memory operation. (Well, two for a bitmap: load the old byte, clear the correct bit, store it. Memory is byte-addressable, but not bit-addressable.)
An easy optimization of the bitmap-based sieve is to not even store the even-numbered bytes, because there is only one even prime, and we can special-case it to double our memory density. Then the membership-status of i is held in array[i/2]. (Dividing by powers of two is easy for computers. Other values are much slower.)
An SO question:
Why is Sieve of Eratosthenes more efficient than the simple "dumb" algorithm? has many links to good stuff about the sieve. This one in particular has some good discussion about it, in words rather than just code. (Nevermind the fact that it's talking about a common Haskell implementation that looks like a sieve, but actually isn't. They call this the "unfaithful" sieve in their graphs, and so on.)
discussion on that question brought up the point that trial division may be fast than big sieves, for some uses, because clearing the bits for all multiples of every prime touches a lot of memory in a cache-unfriendly pattern. CPUs are much faster than memory these days.

Filtering out conditioned arrays from a matrix

In Sweden there is a football (soccer) betting game where you try to find the outcome of 13 matches. Since each match can have a home win, a draw or an away team win this leads to 3**13=1594323 possible outcomes. You win if you have 10 to 13 matches correct. You don't want this to occur when a lot of other people also have high scores since the prize sum is divided among all winners. This is the background to the more generic question that I'm looking for an answer to: how to find all arrays that differ by at least x elements from a given array within the matrix (in this case 1594323*13).
The first obvious idea that came to my mind was to have 13 nested for loops and compare one array at the time. However, I'm using this problem as a training session to learn myself Python programming. Python is not the optimal tool for this kind of task and I could turn to C to get a faster program but I'm interested in the best algorithm as such.
In Python I tried the nested for loop method up to 10 matches, then the execution time got too long, 5 seconds on the netbook I'm using. For each added match, the execution time went up tenfold.
Another approach would be to use a database and that might be the solution but I'm curious what the fastest way of solving this kind of problem is. I haven't been successful googling this problem, maybe because it's hard to use the correct description of the problem in a short search.
Here's a recursive solution that terminates in about 5 seconds on my machine, when given an x value of 0 (the worst case). For x values of 10 and above it's nearly instantaneous.
def arrays_with_differences(arr, x):
if x > len(arr):
return []
if len(arr) == 0:
return [[]]
smallColl1 = arrays_with_differences(arr[:len(arr)-1], x)
smallColl2 = arrays_with_differences(arr[:len(arr)-1], x-1)
last = arr[len(arr)-1]
altLast1 = (last + 1) % 3
altLast2 = (last + 2) % 3
result = [smallArr + [last] for smallArr in smallColl1]
result.extend([smallArr + [altLast1] for smallArr in smallColl2])
result.extend([smallArr + [altLast2] for smallArr in smallColl2])
return result
result = arrays_with_differences([1,0,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1], 4)
print(len(result))

Python prime number code giving runtime error(NZEC) on spoj

I am trying to get an accepted answer for this question:http://www.spoj.com/problems/PRIME1/
It's nothing new, just wanting prime numbers to be generated between two given numbers. Eventually, I have coded the following. But spoj is giving me runtime-error(nzec), and I have no idea how it should be dealt with. I hope you can help me with it. Thanks in advance.
def is_prime(m,n):
myList= []
mySieve= [True] * (n+1)
for i in range(2,n+1):
if mySieve[i]:
myList.append(i)
for x in range(i*i,n+1,i):
mySieve[x]= False
for a in [y for y in myList if y>=m]:
print(a)
t= input()
count = 0
while count <int(t):
m, n = input().split()
count +=1
is_prime(int(m),int(n))
if count == int(t):
break
print("\n")
Looking at the problem definition:
In each of the next t lines there are two numbers m and n (1 <= m <= n <= 1000000000, n-m<=100000) separated by a space.
Looking at your code:
mySieve= [True] * (n+1)
So, if n is 1000000000, you're going to try to create a list of 1000000001 boolean values. That means you're asking Python to allocate storage for a billion pointers. On a 64-bit platform, that's 8GB—which is fine as far as Python's concerned, but might well throw your system into swap hell or get it killed by a limit or watchdog. On a 32-bit platform, that's 4GB—which will guarantee you a MemoryError.
The problem also explicitly has this warning:
Warning: large Input/Output data, be careful with certain languages
So, if you want to implement it this way, you're going to have to come up with a more compact storage. For example, array.array('B', [True]) * (n+1) will only take 1GB instead of 4 or 8. And you can make it even smaller (128MB) if you store it in bits instead of bytes, but that's not quite as trivial a change to code.
Calculating prime numbers between two numbers is meaningless. You can only calculate prime numbers until a given number by using other primes you found before, then show only range you wanted.
Here is a python code and some calculated primes you can continue by using them:
bzr branch http://bzr.ceremcem.net/calc-primes
This code is somewhat trivial but is working correctly and tested well.

What category of combinatorial problems appear on the logic games section of the LSAT?

EDIT: See Solving "Who owns the Zebra" programmatically? for a similar class of problem
There's a category of logic problem on the LSAT that goes like this:
Seven consecutive time slots for a broadcast, numbered in chronological order I through 7, will be filled by six song tapes-G, H, L, O, P, S-and exactly one news tape. Each tape is to be assigned to a different time slot, and no tape is longer than any other tape. The broadcast is subject to the following restrictions:
L must be played immediately before O.
The news tape must be played at some time after L.
There must be exactly two time slots between G and
P, regardless of whether G comes before P or whether G comes after P.
I'm interested in generating a list of permutations that satisfy the conditions as a way of studying for the test and as a programming challenge. However, I'm not sure what class of permutation problem this is. I've generalized the type problem as follows:
Given an n-length array A:
How many ways can a set of n unique items be arranged within A? Eg. How many ways are there to rearrange ABCDEFG?
If the length of the set of unique items is less than the length of A, how many ways can the set be arranged within A if items in the set may occur more than once? Eg. ABCDEF => AABCDEF; ABBCDEF, etc.
How many ways can a set of unique items be arranged within A if the items of the set are subject to "blocking conditions"?
My thought is to encode the restrictions and then use something like Python's itertools to generate the permutations. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
This is easy to solve (a few lines of code) as an integer program. Using a tool like the GNU Linear Programming Kit, you specify your constraints in a declarative manner and let the solver come up with the best solution. Here's an example of a GLPK program.
You could code this using a general-purpose programming language like Python, but this is the type of thing you'll see in the first few chapters of an integer programming textbook. The most efficient algorithms have already been worked out by others.
EDIT: to answer Merjit's question:
Define:
matrix Y where Y_(ij) = 1 if tape i
is played before tape j, and 0
otherwise.
vector C, where C_i
indicates the time slot when i is
played (e.g. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
Large
constant M (look up the term for
"big M" in an optimization textbook)
Minimize the sum of the vector C subject to the following constraints:
Y_(ij) != Y_(ji) // If i is before j, then j must not be before i
C_j < C_k + M*Y_(kj) // the time slot of j is greater than the time slot of k only if Y_(kj) = 1
C_O - C_L = 1 // L must be played immediately before O
C_N > C_L // news tape must be played at some time after L
|C_G - C_P| = 2 // You will need to manipulate this a bit to make it a linear constraint
That should get you most of the way there. You want to write up the above constraints in the MathProg language's syntax (as shown in the links), and make sure I haven't left out any constraints. Then run the GLPK solver on the constraints and see what it comes up with.
Okay, so the way I see it, there are two ways to approach this problem:
Go about writing a program that will approach this problem head first. This is going to be difficult.
But combinatorics teaches us that the easier way to do this is to count all permutations and subtract the ones that don't satisfy your constraints.
I would go with number 2.
You can find all permutations of a given string or list by using this algorithm. Using this algorithm, you can get a list of all permutations. You can now apply a number of filters on this list by checking for the various constraints of the problem.
def L_before_O(s):
return (s.index('L') - s.index('O') == 1)
def N_after_L(s):
return (s.index('L') < s.index('N'))
def G_and_P(s):
return (abs(s.index('G') - s.index('P')) == 2)
def all_perms(s): #this is from the link
if len(s) <=1:
yield s
else:
for perm in all_perms(s[1:]):
for i in range(len(perm)+1):
yield perm[:i] + s[0:1] + perm[i:]
def get_the_answer():
permutations = [i for i in all_perms('GHLOPSN')] #N is the news tape
a = [i for i in permutations if L_before_O(i)]
b = [i for i in a if N_after_L(i)]
c = [i for i in b if G_and_P(i)]
return c
I haven't tested this, but this is general idea of how I would go about coding such a question.
Hope this helps

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