Minimum Time Required

  • + 0 comments

    Explanation: Wouldn't it be great if we had the number of products produced for each day so, we could select the MINIMUM day which would produce our goal count? But we don't. So, do we go ahead and start calculating the number of products produced each day? No, because time complexity would suffer. Instead, we use binary search.

    The basic logic is that we set a minimum day (lower bound) and a maximum day (upper bound, which would be the time taken by the slowest machine to produce the goal count). Then, we find the "mid" value between these 2 days and see the number of product produced in the "mid" day. If the value is lesser than the goal count, we search for our day between "mid" to maximum day. If the value is greater than the goal count, we search for our day between minimum to "mid" day.

    Example: (because I got stuck a lot because of small implementation details) machines[] = [4L, 5L, 6L] goal = 12

    ----begin execution------------

    minimumDays = 0 maximumDays = 6 * 12 = 72

    So, our search bound is 0(minimumDays)-----------------------72(maximumDays)

    Iteration 1: 0(minimumDays)---------36(mid)--------------72(maximumDays) prodCount = 22 > goal

    Iteration 2: 0(minimumDays)-------------18(mid)-----------36(maximumDays) prodCount = 10 < goal

    Iteration 3: 19(minimumDays)-------------27(mid)-----------36(maximumDays) prodCount = 15 > goal

    • Iteration 4:* 19(minimumDays)-------------23(mid)-----------27(maximumDays) prodCount = 12 == goal (Yay, we found the day that produces the goal! But wait. Could this be the actual MINIMUM day?)

    Iteration 5: 19(minimumDays)-------------21(mid)-----------23(maximumDays) prodCount = 12 == goal (Huh, so this one is lesser than the day we found in the last iteration)

    Iteration 6: 19(minimumDays)-------------20(mid)-----------21(maximumDays) prodCount = 12 == goal (even lesser!)

    Iteration 7: 19(minimumDays, mid)-------------------------20(maximumDays) prodCount = 10 < goal

    Iteration 8: * 20(minimumDays, maximumDays) * minimumDays == maximumDays, so loop ends. So we return the value from iteration 6! * * */