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Time complexity of recursive function that calls two halves floor(x / 2) and ceil(x / 2)

Time:08-25

I have a function f(x) that calls f(x / 2) if x is even and calls both f((x 1) / 2) and f((x - 1) / 2) if x is odd. Note that f(1) = constant and we don't recurse further than f(1). (So, it can be said that f(1) is the base condition.)

If I memoize f(x), what will be the time complexity of computing f(x)? Will it be O(2 ^ n) because two functions are called at every level, or will it improve because of memoization?

I tried some cases by hand, and it seems that the complexity is no more than O(log n) and only two new functions are called at every level of recursion. (If I don't memoize, it does seem to be O(2 ^ n))

I'd be glad if someone could help me with the complexity. Thanks!

CodePudding user response:

You can prove by induction that the worst case input of bit length n is 2n 1 - 1, and the worst case even input of bit length n is 2n 1 - 2.

  • confirm that this is true for bit length 2 -- 2 is the only even input, and 3 is worse.
  • Let wn be the worst case input of size n. If the premise is true for size n, then it is true for size n 1, because the worst case even input of size n 1 will recurse on the worst case for size n, and the worst case odd input size n 1 will recurse on the worst odd and even cases for size n.

Then you just need to show that, in processing the worst case, every input is of the form 2n 1 - 1 or 2n 1 - 2, and there are only O(log N) of those.

CodePudding user response:

Let's consider some number x written in binary as x = 11001.

If x is even then it's lsb(least significant bit) is 0 and we have f(x) = f(x / 2).

If x is odd then it's lsb is 1 and depending on the second significant bit we will have two cases:

  • second significant bit is 0 then (x - 1) / 2 is even and (x 1) / 2 is odd.
  • second significant bit is 1 then (x - 1) / 2 is odd and (x 1) / 2 is even.

In both cases we will have f(x) = f(someEvenNumber) f(someOddNumber).

This means any bit in the number will cost either 1 operation if this bit is not set, and 1 operation f(y) where y is < x / 2). The number of these bits is at most log (x) so total complexity will be 2 * log(x) which is same as log (x).

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