I was trying to solve the following problem:Death Row
I spent the whole morning trying to solve it, but just wrong answer.. I just realized that the minimum time that he and his family still living is when Yama at every visit, kills M people and (N-M) >= 2, and when is remaining just N = 2 people, Yama need to visit more two times. I guess it is right, but I'm receiving wrong answer..
Can someone help me ? Thanks in advance.
If I understood the problem correctly then this is the solution:
If n ≤ 3 then answer is n
else if n is even then answer is 3
else answer is 4.
Reasoning is trivial.
I used this strategy but I do not check when N is even (the answer is 3 intead of 4). Can you explain it to me ?
Thank you.
From what I understood the you can either reduce a number by one or reduce a number to some non-trivial factor of itself.
For all even numbers reduce it to 2 in its first step and then take 2 steps to get to 0.
For all odd numbers subtract 1 on first step to make it even, then take 3 steps to get to 0.
You're right, you can do that... :)
Thank you for help me.