What is an efficient method for adding thousands of numbers quickly? - java

I am attempting to solve a challenge, but I have hit a roadblock. I am a beginner programmer attempting to add tens of thousands of numbers. If I wait long enough, my program can easily yield the correct sum, however, I am looking for a more efficient method.
What is an efficient method for adding thousands of numbers quickly?
Side note: I have been reading about modular arithmetic, but I cannot quite wrap my head around it. Not sure if that could be useful for this situation.
I am attempting to get the sum of every prime number below 2 000 000. Here is my code so far:
public class Problem10 {
public static void main (String[] args) {
long sum = 0L;
for(long i = 1L; i < 2000000; i++) {
if(isPrimeNumber((int)i)) {
sum += i;
}
}
System.out.println(sum);
}
public static boolean isPrimeNumber(int i) {
int factors = 0;
int j = 1;
while (j <= i) {
if (i % j == 0) {
factors++;
}
j++;
}
return (factors == 2);
}
}

You can replace your isPrimeNumber() method with this to speed it up substantially.
public static boolean isPrimeNumber(int i) {
if (i==2) return true;
if (i==3) return true;
if (i%2==0) return false;
if (i%3==0) return false;
int j = 5;
int k = 2;
while (j * j <= i) {
if (i % j == 0) return false;
j += k ;
k = 6 - k;
}
return true;
}

This looks like homework, so I'm not going to give you the solution in code. The least you can do is code it yourself.
In your code, isPrimeNumber() is what's taking up most of the time—if I had to guess, I would say 90-99% of it. What you can do to make it faster is implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes.
To start, you create an array that will hold all the prime numbers1. You should start it with a single value: 2. To find more prime numbers, iterate through every integer from 3 to the highest number you want. For each of those numbers, check if that number is divisible by any of the prime numbers in your array. If the next prime number in your array is greater than i / 2, you know that i is prime, and you can add it to your array.
After you have found all the prime numbers from 1 to n, the only way to sum them is by iterating through the array. That part cannot be optimized, but it will not take very long anyways.
1 There are two ways to do this. One is to just use an ArrayList or LinkedList, and add numbers as needed. The other is to create an array that is as large or larger than you need. As mentioned here, the number of primes equal to or less than n is less than (n / log(n)) * (1 + 1.2762 / log(n)), as long as n is greater than 598. If n is less than 598, you can just create an array of length 109.
In regards to the question in the title, "What is an efficient method for adding thousands of numbers quickly?", the only thing I can think of is multithreading. Create an array of all the numbers you want to sum, then have many threads sum different parts of the array. After that, sum all the results from each thread. This method will probably only be noticeably faster when summing huge amount of numbers, e.g. hundreds of thousands or millions.

Related

Why do you divide by two when checking prime numbers in Java?

I was looking over this on YouTube and saw some code. I got most of it but didn't understand at all the reason why you the value n divide by two. Could someone please explain it?
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class Primes {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(findPrimes(1, 100));
}
public static ArrayList<Integer> findPrimes(int start, int end) {
ArrayList<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for(int n = start; n < end; n++) {
boolean prime = true;
int i = 2;
while(i <= n/2) {
if(n % i == 0) {
prime = false;
break;
}
i++;
}
if(prime) {
primes.add(n);
}
}
return primes;
}
}
A number can only be divided by a number that is less than or equal to its half. Or the number to be divided itself.
Here, we are checking till n/2 so that the number of iterations and the load on the system reduces and make the program more efficient. Since the greatest factor which can divide a number (excluding itself) is half of the number, we check only till that point. There is no point of checking beyond that.
It's an attempt to improve the efficiency of the solution by stopping the loop at a point where the algorithm will no longer find any more prime factors.
However, it's suboptimal. If n == a * b and a <= b, a can be no higher than the square root of n. Therefore, checking for i <= Math.sqrt(n) would eliminate many more unnecessary iterations of the loop for large values of n.
A further improvement could be made by iterating over known values of primes instead of incremental values of i, since once you've established that a number isn't divisible by 3 there's no point checking 6, 9, 12 and so on.

Getting Time limit exceeded error in java

class Check {
static void countOddEven(int a[], int n) {
int countEven = 0, countOdd = 0;
for (int item : a) {
if (item % 2 == 0) {
countEven++;
}
}
countOdd = n - countEven;
System.out.println(countOdd + " " + countEven);
}
}
Code is to calculate even and odd numbers in an array. Please help to optimise the code.
You’re code is not correct.
If you were meant to count the even and odd numbers in a, then you are counting the even numbers correctly. If n is not equal to the length of a, then your calculation of the count of odd numbers is incorrect.
If on the other hand — and I’m just guessing — you were meant to count the even and odd numbers among the first n elements, then you are counting the even numbers incorrectly since you are iterating over all of a. Also in this case, if n is much smaller than the length of a, there is an optimization in only iterating over the first n elements as you should.
Finally you may try the following version. I doubt that it buys you anything, but I am leaving the measurements to you.
int countOdd = 0;
for (int ix = 0; ix < n; ix++) {
countOdd += a[ix] & 1;
}
int countEven = n - countOdd;
The trick is: a[ix] & 1 gives you the last bit of a[ix]. This is 1 for odd numbers and 0 for even numbers (positive or negative). So we are really adding a 1 for each odd number.
You should try running code with for loop instead of for each loop
Because ,
When accessing arrays, at least with primitive data for loop is dramatically faster.
however
When accessing collections, a foreach is significantly faster than the basic for loop’s array access.
but if you are getting some another errors , so might have done something wrong while calling the method (make sure n=length of your array)
here is the whole code with main method.
class Check{
static void countOddEven(int a[], int n){
int countEven=0,countOdd=0;
for(int i=0;i<n;i++)
if(a[i]%2==0)
{
countEven++;
}
countOdd=n-countEven;
System.out.println(countOdd+" "+countEven);
}
public static void main(String[] arg){
int a[]={2,3,4,5,6};
int n = 5;
countOddEven(a,n);
}
}

I'm trying to find the sum of primes below 2 million in Java [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Project Euler #10 Java solution not working
(6 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I'm trying to find the sum of primes below millions. My code works when I try to find the sum of primes below hundred thousands but when I go large numbers it doesn't work. So I need some help to get this work for big numbers...
import java.util.Scanner;
public class sumPrime {
public static void main (String args []){
long n = 2000000; int i; int j;int sum =0;
for (i=2; i <n; i++){
for (j=2; j<i; j++){
if (i%j==0){
break;
}
}
if (i==j){
sum +=i;
}
}
System.out.print(sum);
}
}
Your code could be improved by making the inner loop stop earlier. If a number N is not prime, then it must have at least one factor (apart from 1) that is less or equal to sqrt(N). In this case, this simple change should make the program roughly 1000 times faster.
For a simple and (more) efficient algorithm, read up on the Sieve of Eratosthenes.
Bug - your sum needs to be a long. An int will probably overflow.
Note that the classic formulation of Sieve of Eratosthenes needs a large array of booleans (or a bitmap) whose size depends on the largest prime candidate you are interested in. In this case that means a 2Mbyte array (or smaller if you use a bitmap) ... which is too small to worry about. Also, you can reduce the memory usage by sieving in stages, though it makes the code more complicated.
Rather than trying to divide by all the numbers below i you could potentially keep the found prime numbers in a list and try to divide by those prime numbers (since any non prime number will be divisible by a prime number less than that).
public static long sumPrime2() {
List<Long> primes = new ArrayList<>();
primes.add(2L);
primes.add(3L);
long primeSum = 5;
for (long primeCandidate = 5; primeCandidate < 2000000; primeCandidate = primeCandidate + 2) {
boolean isCandidatePrime = true;
double sqrt = Math.sqrt(primeCandidate);
for (int i = 0; i < primes.size(); i++) {
Long prime = primes.get(i);
if (primeCandidate % prime == 0) {
isCandidatePrime = false;
break;
}
if (prime > sqrt) {
break;
}
}
if (isCandidatePrime) {
primes.add(primeCandidate);
primeSum += primeCandidate;
}
System.out.println(primeCandidate);
}
System.out.println(primes.size());
return primeSum;
}
This gave the answer in 8 seconds
I suspect integer overflow in i, j, sum - try making them all longs. In the sample code you shouldn't be getting overflows as Java ints are meant to be 32 bit but at some stage you certainly will.
As already mentioned - i only needs to iterate to the square root of n. So I would replace this line:
for (i=2; i <n; i++){
With:
long limit=sqrt(n);
for (i=2; i <limit; i++){
Note that calculating the square root outside the program loops will also speed things up a bit.
Also the sieve algorithm would be faster but requires Java to create an array containing n elements and at some stage that is going to fail with insufficient memory.
The best algorithm for this program uses the Sieve of Eratosthenes:
function sumPrimes(n)
sum, sieve := 0, makeArray(2..n, True)
for p from 2 to n
if sieve[p]
sum := sum + p
for i from p*p to n step p
sieve[i] := False
return sum
Then sumPrimes(2000000) returns the sum of the primes less than two million, in about a second. I'll leave it to you to translate to Java, with an appropriate data type for the sum. If you're interested in programming with prime numbers, I modestly recommend this essay at my blog.

Sum of all prime numbers below 2 million

Problem 10 from Project Euler:
The program runs for smaller numbers and slows to a crawl in the hundred thousands.
At 2 million, an answer fails to show up even though the program seems like it is still running.
I'm trying to implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes. It is supposed to be very fast. What's wrong with my approach?
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class p010
{
/**
* The sum of the primes below 10 is 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 17
* Find the sum of all the primes below two million.
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args)
{
ArrayList<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();
int upper = 2000000;
for (int i = 2; i < upper; i++)
{
primes.add(i);
}
int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < primes.size(); i++)
{
if (isPrime(primes.get(i)))
{
for (int k = 2; k*primes.get(i) < upper; k++)
{
if (primes.contains(k*primes.get(i)))
{
primes.remove(primes.indexOf(k*primes.get(i)));
}
}
}
}
for (int i = 0; i < primes.size(); i++)
{
sum += primes.get(i);
}
System.out.println(sum);
}
public static boolean isPrime(int number)
{
boolean returnVal = true;
for (int i = 2; i <= Math.sqrt(number); i ++)
{
if (number % i == 0)
{
returnVal = false;
}
}
return returnVal;
}
}
You appear to be trying to implement the Sieve of Eratosthenes which should perform better that O(N^2) (In fact, Wikipedia says it is O(N log(log N)) ...).
The fundamental problem is your choice of data structure. You've chosen to represent the set of remaining prime candidates as an ArrayList of primes. This means that your test to see if a number is still in the set takes O(N) comparisons ... where N is the number of remaining primes. Then you are using ArrayList.remove(int) to remove the non-primes ... which is O(N) also.
That all adds up to making your Sieve implementation worse than O(N^2).
The solution is to replace the ArrayList<Integer> with an boolean[] where the positions (indexes) in the boolean array represent the numbers, and the value of the boolean says whether the number is prime / possibly prime, or not prime.
(There were other problems too that I didn't notice ... see the other answers.)
There are a few issues here. First, lets talk about the algorithm. Your isPrime method is actually the very thing that the sieve is designed to avoid. When you get to a number in the sieve, you already know it's prime, you don't need to test it. If it weren't prime, it would already have been eliminated as a factor of a lower number.
So, point 1:
You can eliminate the isPrime method altogether. It should never return false.
Then, there are implementation issues. primes.contains and primes.remove are problems. They run in linear time on an ArrayList, because they require checking each element or rewriting a large portion of the backing array.
Point 2:
Either mark values in place (use boolean[], or use some other more appropriate data structure.)
I typically use something like boolean primes = new boolean[upper+1], and define n to be included if !(primes[n]). (I just ignore elements 0 and 1 so I don't have to subtract indices.) To "remove" an element, I set it to true. You could also use something like TreeSet<Integer>, I suppose. Using boolean[], the method is near-instantaneous.
Point 3:
sum needs to be a long. The answer (roughly 1.429e11) is larger than the maximum value of an integer (2^31-1)
I can post working code if you like, but here's a test output, without spoilers:
public static void main(String[] args) {
long value;
long start;
long finish;
start = System.nanoTime();
value = arrayMethod(2000000);
finish = System.nanoTime();
System.out.printf("Value: %.3e, time: %4d ms\n", (double)value, (finish-start)/1000000);
start = System.nanoTime();
value = treeMethod(2000000);
finish = System.nanoTime();
System.out.printf("Value: %.3e, time: %4d ms\n", (double)value, (finish-start)/1000000);
}
output:
Using boolean[]
Value: 1.429e+11, time: 17 ms
Using TreeSet<Integer>
Value: 1.429e+11, time: 4869 ms
Edit:
Since spoilers are posted, here's my code:
public static long arrayMethod(int upper) {
boolean[] primes = new boolean[upper+1];
long sum = 0;
for (int i = 2; i <=upper; i++) {
if (!primes[i]) {
sum += i;
for (int k = 2*i; k <= upper; k+=i) {
primes[k] = true;
}
}
}
return sum;
}
public static long treeMethod(int upper) {
TreeSet<Integer> primes = new TreeSet<Integer>();
for (int i = 2; i <= upper; i++) {
primes.add(i);
}
long sum = 0;
for (Integer i = 2; i != null; i=primes.higher(i)) {
sum += i;
for (int k = 2*i; k <= upper; k+=i) {
primes.remove(k);
}
}
return sum;
}
Two things:
Your code is hard to follow. You have a list called "primes", that contains non prime numbers!
Also, you should strongly consider whether or not an array list is appropriate. In this case, a LinkedList would be much more efficient.
Why is this? An array list must constantly resize an array by: asking for new memory to create an array, then copying the old memory over in the newly created array. A Linked list would just resize the memory by changing a pointer. This is a lot quicker! However, I do not think that by making this change you can salvage your algorithm.
You should use an array list if you need to access the items non-sequentially, here, (with a suitable algorithm) you need to access the items sequentially.
Also, your algorithm is slow.Take the advice of SJuan76 (or gyrogearless), thanks sjuan76
The key to the efficiency of classic implementation of the sieve of Eratosthenes on modern CPUs is the direct (i.e. non-sequential) memory access. Fortunately, ArrayList<E> does implement RandomAccess.
Another key to the sieve's efficiency is its conflation of index and value, just like in integer sorting. Actually removing any number from the sequence destroys this ability to directly address without any computations. We must mark, not remove, any composite as we find them, so any numbers greater than it will remain in their places in the sequence.
ArrayList<Integer> can be used for that (except taking more memory than is strictly necessary, but for 2 million this is inconsequential).
So your code with a minimal edit fix (also changing sum to be long as others point out too), becomes
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class Main
{
/**
* The sum of the primes below 10 is 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 17
* Find the sum of all the primes below two million.
* #param args
*/
public static void main(String[] args)
{
ArrayList<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();
int upper = 5000;
primes.ensureCapacity(upper);
for (int i = 0; i < upper; i++) {
primes.add(i);
}
long sum = 0;
for (int i = 2; i <= upper / i; i++) {
if ( primes.get(i) > 0 ) {
for (int k = i*i; k < upper ; k+=i) {
primes.set(k, 0);
}
}
}
for (int i = 2; i < upper; i++) {
sum += primes.get(i);
}
System.out.println(sum);
}
}
Finds the result for 2000000 in half a second on Ideone. The projected run time for your original code there: between 10 and 400 hours (!).
To find rough estimates for the run time when faced with a slow code, you should always try to find out its empirical orders of growth: run it for some small size n1, then a bigger size n2, record the run times t1 and t2. If t ~ n^a, then a = log(t2/t1) / log(n2/n1).
For your original code the empirical orders of growth measured on 10k .. 20k .. 40k range of upper limit value N, are ~ N^1.7 .. N^1.9 .. N^2.1. For the fixed code it's faster than ~ N (in fact, it's ~ N^0.9 in the tested range 0.5 mln .. 1 mln .. 2 mln). The theoretical complexity is O(N log (log N)).
Your program is not the Sieve of Eratosthenes; the modulo operator gives it away. Your program will be O(n^2), where a proper Sieve of Eratosthenes is O(n log log n), which is essentially n. Here's my version; I'll leave it to you to translate to Java with appropriate numeric datatypes:
function sumPrimes(n)
sum := 0
sieve := makeArray(2..n, True)
for p from 2 to n step 1
if sieve[p]
sum := sum + p
for i from p * p to n step p
sieve[i] := False
return sum
If you're interested in programming with prime numbers, I modestly recommend this essay at my blog.

Project Euler 14: Issue with array indexing in a novel solution

The problem in question can be found at http://projecteuler.net/problem=14
I'm trying what I think is a novel solution. At least it is not brute-force. My solution works on two assumptions:
1) The less times you have iterate through the sequence, the quicker you'll get the answer. 2) A sequence will necessarily be longer than the sequences of each of its elements
So I implemented an array of all possible numbers that could appear in the sequence. The highest number starting a sequence is 999999 (as the problem only asks you to test numbers less than 1,000,000); therefore the highest possible number in any sequence is 3 * 999999 + 1 = 2999998 (which is even, so would then be divided by 2 for the next number in the sequence). So the array need only be of this size. (In my code the array is actually 2999999 elements, as I have included 0 so that each number matches its array index. However, this isn't necessary, it is for comprehension).
So once a number comes in a sequence, its value in the array becomes 0. If subsequent sequences reach this value, they will know not to proceed any further, as it is assumed they will be longer.
However, when i run the code I get the following error, at the line introducing the "wh:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 3188644
For some reason it is trying to access an index of the above value, which shouldn't be reachable as it is over the possible max of 29999999. Can anyone understand why this is happening?
Please note that I have no idea if my assumptions are actually sound. I'm an amateur programmer and not a mathematician. I'm experimenting. Hopefully I'll find out whether it works as soon as I get the indexing correct.
Code is as follows:
private static final int MAX_START = 999999;
private static final int MAX_POSSIBLE = 3 * MAX_START + 1;
public long calculate()
{
int[] numbers = new int[MAX_POSSIBLE + 1];
for(int index = 0; index <= MAX_POSSIBLE; index++)
{
numbers[index] = index;
}
int longestChainStart = 0;
for(int index = 1; index <= numbers.length; index++)
{
int currentValue = index;
if(numbers[currentValue] != 0)
{
longestChainStart = currentValue;
while(numbers[currentValue] != 0 && currentValue != 1)
{
numbers[currentValue] = 0;
if(currentValue % 2 == 0)
{
currentValue /= 2;
}
else
{
currentValue = 3 * currentValue + 1;
}
}
}
}
return longestChainStart;
}
Given that you can't (easily) put a limit on the possible maximum number of a sequence, you might want to try a different approach. I might suggest something based on memoization.
Suppose you've got an array of size 1,000,000. Each entry i will represent the length of the sequence from i to 1. Remember, you don't need the sequences themselves, but rather, only the length of the sequences. You can start filling in your table at 1---the length is 0. Starting at 2, you've got length 1, and so on. Now, say we're looking at entry n, which is even. You can look at the length of the sequence at entry n/2 and just add 1 to that for the value at n. If you haven't calculated n/2 yet, just do the normal calculations until you get to a value you have calculated. A similar process holds if n is odd.
This should bring your algorithm's running time down significantly, and prevent any problems with out-of-bounds errors.
You can solve this by this way
import java.util.LinkedList;
public class Problem14 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
LinkedList<Long> list = new LinkedList<Long>();
long length =0;
int res =0;
for(int j=10; j<1000000; j++)
{
long i=j;
while(i!=1)
{
if(i%2==0)
{
i =i/2;
list.add(i);
}
else
{
i =3*i+1;
list.add(i);
}
}
if(list.size()>length)
{
length =list.size();
res=j;
}
list.clear();
}
System.out.println(res+ " highest nuber and its length " + length);
}}

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