Day 2: Red-Nosed Reports

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FAQ

  • @[email protected]
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    21 day ago

    TypeScript

    Solution
    import { AdventOfCodeSolutionFunction } from "./solutions";
    
    
    /**
     * this function evaluates the 
     * @param levels a list to check
     * @returns -1 if there is no errors, or the index of where there's an unsafe event
     */
    export function EvaluateLineSafe(levels: Array<number>) {
        // this loop is the checking every number in the line
        let isIncreasing: boolean | null = null;
        for (let levelIndex = 1; levelIndex < levels.length; levelIndex++) {
            const prevLevel = levels[levelIndex - 1]; // previous
            const level = levels[levelIndex]; // current
            const diff = level - prevLevel; // difference
            const absDiff = Math.abs(diff); // absolute difference
    
            // check if increasing too much or not at all
            if (absDiff == 0 || absDiff > 3)
                return levelIndex; // go to the next report
    
            // set increasing if needed
            if (isIncreasing === null) {
                isIncreasing = diff > 0;
                continue; // compare the next numbers
            }
    
            //  check if increasing then decreasing 
            if (!(isIncreasing && diff > 0 || !isIncreasing && diff < 0))
                return levelIndex; // go to the next report
        }
    
        return -1;
    }
    
    
    export const solution_2: AdventOfCodeSolutionFunction = (input) => {
        const reports = input.split("\n");
    
        let safe = 0;
        let safe_damp = 0;
    
        // this loop is for every line
        main: for (let i = 0; i < reports.length; i++) {
            const report = reports[i].trim();
            if (!report)
                continue; // report is empty
    
            const levels = report.split(" ").map((v) => Number(v));
    
            const evaluation = EvaluateLineSafe(levels);
            if(evaluation == -1) {
                safe++;
                continue;
            }
            
            // search around where it failed
            for (let offset = evaluation - 2; offset <= evaluation + 2; offset++) {
                // delete an evaluation in accordance to the offset
                let newLevels = [...levels];
                newLevels.splice(offset, 1);
                const newEval = EvaluateLineSafe(newLevels);
                if(newEval == -1) {
                    safe_damp++;
                    continue main;
                }
            }
        }
    
        return `Part 1: ${safe} Part 2: ${safe + safe_damp}`;
    }
    

    God, I really wish my solutions weren’t so convoluted. Also, this is an O(N^3) solution…

        • @[email protected]
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          27 hours ago

          It’s not as simple as that. You can have 20 nested for loops with complexity of O(1) if all of them only ever finish one iteration.

          Or you can have one for loop that iterates 2^N times.

          • @[email protected]
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            17 hours ago

            What do you think my complexity is?

            I think it could be maybe O(n^2) because the other for loop which tries elements around the first error will only execute a constant of 5 times in the worst case? I’m unsure.

            • @[email protected]
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              25 hours ago

              It really depends on what your parameter n is. If the only relevant size is the number of records (let’s say that is n), then this solution takes time in O(n), because it loops over records only once at a time. This ignores the length of records by considering it constant.

              If we also consider the maximum length of records (let’s call it m), then your solution, and most others I’ve seen in this thread, has a time complexity in O(n * m^2) for part 2.

            • @[email protected]
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              25 hours ago

              It’s O(n).

              If you look at each of the levels of all reports, you will access it a constant number of times: at most twice in each call to EvaluateLineSafe, and you will call EvaluateLineSafe at most six times for each report.