A route starts with T[1, 1]. For r < N, a route may step from T[r, p] to either T[r+1, p] or T[r+1, p+1]. It ends in some T[N, p] with 1 <= p <= N. Thus, a route visits N numbers in N-1 steps. At each step in a route there are two possible ways to go. Hence, there are 2^(N-1) routes in the triangle. The largest possible triangle (N=100) has 2^99 routes. This is a huge number close to 10^30. The smallest value for a route sum is zero, and the largest value is N*99, which is less than 10,000.
Our first design decision concerns the input data. Two approaches are possible:
const MaxN = 100 ; type index = 1..MaxN ; number = 0..99 ; var N: index ; { number of rows } T: array [index, index] of number ; { T[r, p] is the number in row r at position p }(The triangle can be made into a rectangle by folding it, but this complicates the program unnecessarily.) Our first three programs start by reading all input data. In the fourth program we illustrate the other approach.
For N=1 the problem is easy because there is only one route. In that case the maximum route sum equals T[1, 1]. For N>1, two types of routes can be distinguished: one half of the routes turns left on the first step from the top, the other half goes to the right. Each route sum equals T[1, 1] plus the sum over the route continuing from T[2, 1] when turning left, or from T[2, 2] when turning right. Therefore, the maximum route sum equals T[1, 1] plus the maximum of the sums over routes starting either in T[2, 1] or in T[2, 2]. Determining the maximum sum for routes starting in T[2, p] is the same problem for a smaller triangle.
function MaxRS(r, p: index): integer ; { return maximum sum over all down routes starting in T[r, p] } begin if r = N then MaxRS := T[r, p] else MaxRS := T[r, p] + Max(MaxRS(r+1, p), MaxRS(r+1, p+1)) end { MaxRS } ;The invocation MaxRS(1, 1) then solves the problem. This solution is presented in Program 1. However, this program passes the first three or four tests only. For a triangle with 60 rows (test 5) the number of routes is simply too large (more than 10^17) to be investigated in 30 seconds. You can eliminate the separate function Max (for computing the maximum of two numbers) by writing it out into the body of function MaxRS, but that will not help (enough).
This problem was included precisely because it is tempting to use recursion. The `plain' recursive solution was intended to fail (on some of the tests).
We introduce a table MRS that is initialized at -1 to indicate that the results are not yet known (note that all route sums are at least 0). The function MaxRS can be modified as follows:
function MaxRS(r, p: index): integer ; { return maximum sum over all down routes starting in T[r, p] } begin if MRS[r, p] = -1 then if r = N then MRS[r, p] := T[r, p] else MRS[r, p] := T[r, p] + Max(MaxRS(r+1, p), MaxRS(r+1, p+1)) ; MaxRS := MRS[r, p] end { MaxRS } ;This idea is incorporated in Program 2. It is still a simple program and now it is also fast enough, because not all routes are followed completely. A disadvantage of this solution is that it requires additional storage for the table. In fact, Program 2 uses at least twice the amount of data memory compared to Program 1 (such a trade-off between speed and memory usage is a common dilemma). You can squeeze the table into the upper-right triangle of the square array, but that would complicate the program needlessly.
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It is now a small step to come up with a program that fills table MRS in a non-recursive way. Furthermore, this can be done in a more convenient order, say row by row from the bottom. That is, for five rows in the order:
15 13 14 10 11 12 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5The following procedure computes MRS non-recursively (also called iteratively):
procedure ComputeAnswer ; { m := the maximum route sum } var r, p: index ; begin for r := N downto 1 do for p := 1 to r do if r = N then MRS[r, p] := T[r, p] else MRS[r, p] := T[r, p] + Max(MRS[r+1, p], MRS[r+1, p+1]) ; m := MRS[1, 1] end { ComputeAnswer } ;(Of course, you can eliminate the if-statement by introducing a separate p-loop for r=N, but the program is fast enough as it is and better to understand this way.) Observe that each number T[r, p] is now inspected exactly once. Therefore, we do not need a separate table for storing MRS if we put MRS[r, p] at T[r, p]. The type of T must be adjusted because the input T-values are numbers in the range 0..99, but MRS-values possibly not. This idea is worked out in Program 3.
Given a triangle with numbers, compute how many routes take on the maximum route sum. Similarly, compute the mean path sum.