Ideas Related to Subset Sum with 2,3 and more integers
- by rolandbishop
I've been struggling with this problem just like everyone else and I'm quite sure there has been more than enough posts to explain this problem. However in terms of understanding it fully, I wanted to share my thoughts and get more efficient solutions from all the great people in here related to Subset Sum problem.
I've searched it over the Internet and there is actually a lot sources but I'm really willing to re-implement an algorithm or finding my own in order to understand fully.
The key thing I'm struggling with is the efficiency considering the set size will be large. (I do not have a limit, just conceptually large). The two phases I'm trying to implement ideas on is finding two numbers that are equal to given integer T, finding three numbers and eventually K numbers. Some ideas I've though;
For the two integer part I'm thing basically sorting the array O(nlogn) and for each element in the array searching for its negative value. (i.e if the array element is 3 searching for -3). Maybe a hash table inclusion could be better, providing a O(1) indexing the element?
For the three or more integers I've found an amazing blog post;http://www.skorks.com/2011/02/algorithms-a-dropbox-challenge-and-dynamic-programming/. However even the author itself states that it is not applicable for large numbers.
So I was for 2 and 3 and more integers what ideas could be applied for the subset problem. I'm struggling with setting up a dynamic programming method that will be efficient for the large inputs as well.
