If n numbers are given, how would I find the total number of possible triangles? Is there any method that does this in less than O(n^3) time?
I am considering a+b>c, b+c>a and a+c>b conditions for being a triangle.
Assume there is no equal numbers in given n and it's allowed to use one number more than once. For example, we given a numbers {1,2,3}, so we can create 7 triangles:
- 1 1 1
- 1 2 2
- 1 3 3
- 2 2 2
- 2 2 3
- 2 3 3
- 3 3 3
If any of those assumptions isn't true, it's easy to modify algorithm.
Here I present algorithm which takes O(n^2) time in worst case:
- Sort numbers (ascending order). We will take triples ai <= aj <= ak, such that i <= j <= k.
- For each i, j you need to find largest k that satisfy ak <= ai + aj. Then all triples (ai,aj,al) j <= l <= k is triangle (because ak >= aj >= ai we can only violate ak < a i+ aj).
Consider two pairs (i, j1) and (i, j2) j1 <= j2. It's easy to see that k2 (found on step 2 for (i, j2)) >= k1 (found one step 2 for (i, j1)). It means that if you iterate for j, and you only need to check numbers starting from previous k. So it gives you O(n) time complexity for each particular i, which implies O(n^2) for whole algorithm.
C++ source code:
int Solve(int* a, int n)
{
int answer = 0;
std::sort(a, a + n);
for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
{
int k = i;
for (int j = i; j < n; ++j)
{
while (n > k && a[i] + a[j] > a[k])
++k;
answer += k - j;
}
}
return answer;
}
Update for downvoters:
This definitely is O(n^2)! Please read carefully "An Introduction of Algorithms" by Thomas H. Cormen chapter about Amortized Analysis (17.2 in second edition). Finding complexity by counting nested loops is completely wrong sometimes. Here I try to explain it as simple as I could. Let's fix i variable. Then for that i we must iterate j from i to n (it means O(n) operation) and internal while loop iterate k from i to n (it also means O(n) operation). Note: I don't start while loop from the beginning for each j. We also need to do it for each i from 0 to n. So it gives us n * (O(n) + O(n)) = O(n^2).
If you use a binary sort, that's O(n-log(n)), right? Keep your binary tree handy, and for each pair (a,b) where a b and c < (a+b).
There is a simple algorithm in O(n^2*logn).
- Assume you want all triangles as triples
(a, b, c)wherea <= b <= c. - There are 3 triangle inequalities but only
a + b > csuffices (others then hold trivially).
And now:
- Sort the sequence in
O(n * logn), e.g. by merge-sort. - For each pair
(a, b), a <= bthe remaining valuecneeds to be at leastband less thana + b. - So you need to count the number of items in the interval
[b, a+b).
This can be simply done by binary-searching a+b (O(logn)) and counting the number of items in [b,a+b) for every possibility which is b-a.
All together O(n * logn + n^2 * logn) which is O(n^2 * logn). Hope this helps.
Let a, b and c be three sides. The below condition must hold for a triangle (Sum of two sides is greater than the third side)
i) a + b > c
ii) b + c > a
iii) a + c > b
Following are steps to count triangle.
Sort the array in non-decreasing order.
Initialize two pointers ‘i’ and ‘j’ to first and second elements respectively, and initialize count of triangles as 0.
Fix ‘i’ and ‘j’ and find the rightmost index ‘k’ (or largest ‘arr[k]‘) such that ‘arr[i] + arr[j] > arr[k]‘. The number of triangles that can be formed with ‘arr[i]‘ and ‘arr[j]‘ as two sides is ‘k – j’. Add ‘k – j’ to count of triangles.
Let us consider ‘arr[i]‘ as ‘a’, ‘arr[j]‘ as b and all elements between ‘arr[j+1]‘ and ‘arr[k]‘ as ‘c’. The above mentioned conditions (ii) and (iii) are satisfied because ‘arr[i] < arr[j] < arr[k]'. And we check for condition (i) when we pick 'k'
4.Increment ‘j’ to fix the second element again.
Note that in step 3, we can use the previous value of ‘k’. The reason is simple, if we know that the value of ‘arr[i] + arr[j-1]‘ is greater than ‘arr[k]‘, then we can say ‘arr[i] + arr[j]‘ will also be greater than ‘arr[k]‘, because the array is sorted in increasing order.
5.If ‘j’ has reached end, then increment ‘i’. Initialize ‘j’ as ‘i + 1′, ‘k’ as ‘i+2′ and repeat the steps 3 and 4.
Time Complexity: O(n^2). The time complexity looks more because of 3 nested loops. If we take a closer look at the algorithm, we observe that k is initialized only once in the outermost loop. The innermost loop executes at most O(n) time for every iteration of outer most loop, because k starts from i+2 and goes upto n for all values of j. Therefore, the time complexity is O(n^2).
I have worked out an algorithm that runs in O(n^2 lgn) time. I think its correct... The code is wtitten in C++...
int Search_Closest(A,p,q,n) /*Returns the index of the element closest to n in array
A[p..q]*/
{
if(p<q)
{
int r = (p+q)/2;
if(n==A[r])
return r;
if(p==r)
return r;
if(n<A[r])
Search_Closest(A,p,r,n);
else
Search_Closest(A,r,q,n);
}
else
return p;
}
int no_of_triangles(A,p,q) /*Returns the no of triangles possible in A[p..q]*/
{
int sum = 0;
Quicksort(A,p,q); //Sorts the array A[p..q] in O(nlgn) expected case time
for(int i=p;i<=q;i++)
for(int j =i+1;j<=q;j++)
{
int c = A[i]+A[j];
int k = Search_Closest(A,j,q,c);
/* no of triangles formed with A[i] and A[j] as two sides is (k+1)-2 if A[k] is small or equal to c else its (k+1)-3. As index starts from zero we need to add 1 to the value*/
if(A[k]>c)
sum+=k-2;
else
sum+=k-1;
}
return sum;
}
Hope it helps........
Although we can use binary search to find the value of 'k' hence improve time complexity!
N0,N1,N2,...Nn-1
sort
X0,X1,X2,...Xn-1 as X0>=X1>=X2>=...>=Xn-1
choice X0(to Xn-3) and choice form rest two item x1...
choice case of (X0,X1,X2)
check(X0<X1+X2)
OK is find and continue
NG is skip choice rest
It seems there is no algorithm better than O(n^3). In the worst case, the result set itself has O(n^3) elements.
For Example, if n equal numbers are given, the algorithm has to return n*(n-1)*(n-2) results.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8110538/total-number-of-possible-triangles-from-n-numbers