PRPOTION explanation of test case

qstn:-http://www.codechef.com/OCT14/problems/PRPOTION#comment-86720

please someone explain the last test case answer

that is

3 2 2 2

1 2 3

2 4

6 8

2 Likes
  • Red liquid portion = (1,2,3)
  • Green liquid portion = (2,4)
  • Blue liquid portion = (6,8) and only two minutes
  • for 1st minute select Blue liquid portion and reduce it to half
  • hence it becomes (r,g,b) = ((1,2,3),(2,4),(3,4))
  • now you can select green liquid portion or again blue liquid portion and reduce either of them by half
  • hence it becomes (r,g,b) = ((1,2,3),(1,2),(3,4)) if we consider Green portion
  • now 2 minutes completed so maximum of all portions is 4
  • so our final out put is 4
6 Likes

hey they changed the question but i have the solution for previous question
i will post after the contest

How can you halve the content of g in second step and not increase the r & b contents by 1?

@xiaoyu_02 I think you didnt read the question after they have updated the problem statement… Please read it once

hehe… same here bro, firtly i thought as usual ,only test cases has been updated , so i wasted 1 hour to implement a recursive solution for the original question… but thereafter while submitting i saw the whole problem statement is being updated…

@aniket20 Yes, I missed it! Thanks man! :slight_smile:

Aren’t we suppose to consider Blue potion only in the 2nd minute because it has a higher total sum?
2+4=6
3+4=7.
Because the question says, “She would like to minimize the maximum amount of liquid among TOTAL of Red, total of Green and total of Blue.”

1 Like

But now the question has changed…so now do we have to choose the color with greatest sum for each magic trick??

I implemented both solution - the one minimizing total amount and the one minimizing the max amount for one color and the latter got accepted, so the examples are correct, while description is not…


In a meantime my question on problem page was answered and problem statement fixed:

She would like to minimize the maximum amount of liquid among all of Red, Green and Blue colored potions. Formally Let v be the maximum value of amount of liquid in any potion. We want to minimize the value of v.

@varun1’s comment was misleading for problem setter probably:

varun1 @ 5 Oct 2014 07:41 AM:

“She would like to minimize the maximum amount of liquid among total of Red, total of Green and total of Blue.” Above statement would improve clarity