1280

I had an interesting job interview experience a while back. The question started really easy:

Q1: We have a bag containing numbers 1, 2, 3, …, 100. Each number appears exactly once, so there are 100 numbers. Now one number is randomly picked out of the bag. Find the missing number.

I've heard this interview question before, of course, so I very quickly answered along the lines of:

A1: Well, the sum of the numbers 1 + 2 + 3 + … + N is (N+1)(N/2) (see Wikipedia: sum of arithmetic series). For N = 100, the sum is 5050.

Thus, if all numbers are present in the bag, the sum will be exactly 5050. Since one number is missing, the sum will be less than this, and the difference is that number. So we can find that missing number in O(N) time and O(1) space.

At this point I thought I had done well, but all of a sudden the question took an unexpected turn:

Q2: That is correct, but now how would you do this if TWO numbers are missing?

I had never seen/heard/considered this variation before, so I panicked and couldn't answer the question. The interviewer insisted on knowing my thought process, so I mentioned that perhaps we can get more information by comparing against the expected product, or perhaps doing a second pass after having gathered some information from the first pass, etc, but I really was just shooting in the dark rather than actually having a clear path to the solution.

The interviewer did try to encourage me by saying that having a second equation is indeed one way to solve the problem. At this point I was kind of upset (for not knowing the answer before hand), and asked if this is a general (read: "useful") programming technique, or if it's just a trick/gotcha answer.

The interviewer's answer surprised me: you can generalize the technique to find 3 missing numbers. In fact, you can generalize it to find k missing numbers.

Qk: If exactly k numbers are missing from the bag, how would you find it efficiently?

This was a few months ago, and I still couldn't figure out what this technique is. Obviously there's a Ω(N) time lower bound since we must scan all the numbers at least once, but the interviewer insisted that the TIME and SPACE complexity of the solving technique (minus the O(N) time input scan) is defined in k not N.

So the question here is simple:

  • How would you solve Q2?
  • How would you solve Q3?
  • How would you solve Qk?

Clarifications

  • Generally there are N numbers from 1..N, not just 1..100.
  • I'm not looking for the obvious set-based solution, e.g. using a bit set, encoding the presence/absence each number by the value of a designated bit, therefore using O(N) bits in additional space. We can't afford any additional space proportional to N.
  • I'm also not looking for the obvious sort-first approach. This and the set-based approach are worth mentioning in an interview (they are easy to implement, and depending on N, can be very practical). I'm looking for the Holy Grail solution (which may or may not be practical to implement, but has the desired asymptotic characteristics nevertheless).

So again, of course you must scan the input in O(N), but you can only capture small amount of information (defined in terms of k not N), and must then find the k missing numbers somehow.

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    @polygenelubricants Thank You for the clarifications. "I'm looking for an algorithm that uses O(N) time and O(K) space where K is the count of absent numbers" would have been clear from the beginning on ;-)
    – Dave O.
    Aug 16, 2010 at 17:29
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    You should precise, in the statement of Q1 that you cannot access the numbers in order. This probably seems obvious to you, but I've never heard of the question and the term "bag" (which means "multiset" as well) was sort of confusing.
    – Jérémie
    Aug 16, 2010 at 18:44
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    Please read the following as the answers provided here are ridiculous: stackoverflow.com/questions/4406110/…
    – Matthieu N.
    Dec 26, 2010 at 9:10
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    The solution of summing the numbers requires log(N) space unless you consider the space requirement for an unbounded integer to be O(1). But if you allow for unbounded integers, then you have as much space as you want with just one integer.
    – Udo Klein
    Apr 10, 2013 at 5:53
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    By the way pretty nice alternative solution for Q1 could be computing XOR of all numbers from 1 to n, then xoring result with all numbers in the given array. In the end you have your missing number. In this solution you don't need to care about overflow as in summing up.
    – sbeliakov
    Sep 23, 2015 at 15:32

49 Answers 49

639

Here's a summary of Dimitris Andreou's link.

Remember sum of i-th powers, where i=1,2,..,k. This reduces the problem to solving the system of equations

a1 + a2 + ... + ak = b1

a12 + a22 + ... + ak2 = b2

...

a1k + a2k + ... + akk = bk

Using Newton's identities, knowing bi allows to compute

c1 = a1 + a2 + ... ak

c2 = a1a2 + a1a3 + ... + ak-1ak

...

ck = a1a2 ... ak

If you expand the polynomial (x-a1)...(x-ak) the coefficients will be exactly c1, ..., ck - see Viète's formulas. Since every polynomial factors uniquely (ring of polynomials is an Euclidean domain), this means ai are uniquely determined, up to permutation.

This ends a proof that remembering powers is enough to recover the numbers. For constant k, this is a good approach.

However, when k is varying, the direct approach of computing c1,...,ck is prohibitely expensive, since e.g. ck is the product of all missing numbers, magnitude n!/(n-k)!. To overcome this, perform computations in Zq field, where q is a prime such that n <= q < 2n - it exists by Bertrand's postulate. The proof doesn't need to be changed, since the formulas still hold, and factorization of polynomials is still unique. You also need an algorithm for factorization over finite fields, for example the one by Berlekamp or Cantor-Zassenhaus.

High level pseudocode for constant k:

  • Compute i-th powers of given numbers
  • Subtract to get sums of i-th powers of unknown numbers. Call the sums bi.
  • Use Newton's identities to compute coefficients from bi; call them ci. Basically, c1 = b1; c2 = (c1b1 - b2)/2; see Wikipedia for exact formulas
  • Factor the polynomial xk-c1xk-1 + ... + ck.
  • The roots of the polynomial are the needed numbers a1, ..., ak.

For varying k, find a prime n <= q < 2n using e.g. Miller-Rabin, and perform the steps with all numbers reduced modulo q.

EDIT: The previous version of this answer stated that instead of Zq, where q is prime, it is possible to use a finite field of characteristic 2 (q=2^(log n)). This is not the case, since Newton's formulas require division by numbers up to k.

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    You don't have to use a prime field, you can also use q = 2^(log n). (How did you make the super- and subscripts?!) Aug 16, 2010 at 12:45
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    +1 This is really, really clever. At the same time, it's questionable, whether it's really worth the effort, or whether (parts of) this solution to a quite artificial problem can be reused in another way. And even if this were a real world problem, on many platforms the most trivial O(N^2) solution will probably possibly outperform this beauty for even reasonably high N. Makes me think of this: tinyurl.com/c8fwgw Nonetheless, great work! I wouldn't have had the patience to crawl through all the math :)
    – back2dos
    Aug 16, 2010 at 13:52
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    I think this is a wonderful answer. I think this also illustrates how poor of an interview question it would be to extend the missing numbers beyond one. Even the first is kind of a gotchya, but it's common enough that it basically shows "you did some interview prep." But to expect a CS major to know go beyond k=1 (especially "on the spot" in an interview) is a bit silly.
    – corsiKa
    Mar 25, 2011 at 21:03
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    This is effectively doing Reed Solomon coding on the input. Mar 2, 2014 at 17:26
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    I bet entering all number in a hash set and iterating over the 1...N suite using lookups to determine if numbers are missing, would be the most generic, fastest in average regarding k variations, most debuggable most maintainable and understandable solution. Of course the math way is impressive but somewhere along the way you need to be an engineer and not a mathematician. Especially when business is involved.
    – v.oddou
    Apr 3, 2014 at 7:54
188

We can solve Q2 by summing both the numbers themselves, and the squares of the numbers.

We can then reduce the problem to

k1 + k2 = x
k1^2 + k2^2 = y

Where x and y are how far the sums are below the expected values.

Substituting gives us:

(x-k2)^2 + k2^2 = y

Which we can then solve to determine our missing numbers.

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    +1; I've tried the formula in Maple for select numbers and it works. I still couldn't convince myself WHY it works, though. Aug 16, 2010 at 11:12
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    @polygenelubricants: If you wanted to prove correctness, you would first show that it always provides a correct solution (that is, it always produces a pair of numbers which, when removing them from the set, would result in the remainder of the set having the observed sum and sum-of-squares). From there, proving uniqueness is as simple as showing that it only produces one such pair of numbers.
    – Anon.
    Aug 16, 2010 at 11:50
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    The nature of the equations means that you will get two values of k2 from that equation. However, from teh first equation that you use to generate k1 you can see that these two values of k2 will mean that k1 is the other value so you have two solutions that are the same numbers the opposite way around. If you abitrarily declared that k1>k2 then you'd only have one solution to the quadratic equation and thus one solution overall. And clearly by the nature of the question an answer always exists so it always works.
    – Chris
    Aug 16, 2010 at 12:06
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    For a given sum k1+k2, there are many pairs. We can write these pairs as K1=a+b and K2 = a-b where a = (K1+k2/2). a is unique for a given sum. The sum of the squares (a+b)**2 + (a-b)**2 = 2*(a2 + b2). For a given sum K1+K2, the a2 term is fixed and we see that the sum of the squares will be unique due to the b2 term. Therefore, the values x and y are unique for a pair of integers.
    – phkahler
    Aug 16, 2010 at 14:31
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    This is awesome. @user3281743 here's an example. Let the missing numbers (k1 and k2) be 4 and 6. Sum(1 -> 10) = 55 and Sum(1^2 -> 10^2) = 385. Now let x = 55 - (Sum(All remaining numbers)) and y = 385 - (Sum(Squares of all remaining numbers)) thus x = 10 and y = 52. Substitute as shown which leaves us with: (10 - k2)^2 + k2^2 = 52 which you can simplify to: 2k^2 - 20k + 48 = 0. Solving the quadratic equation gives you 4 and 6 as the answer.
    – AlexKoren
    Oct 12, 2015 at 2:07
154

I asked a 4-year-old to solve this problem. He sorted the numbers and then counted along. This has a space requirement of O(kitchen floor), and it works just as easy however many balls are missing.

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    ;) your 4 year old must be approaching 5 or/and is a genius. my 4 year old daughter cannot even count properly to 4 yet. well to be fair let's say she just barely finally integrated the "4"'s existence. otherwise until now she would always skip it. "1,2,3,5,6,7" was her usual counting sequence. I asked her to add pencils together and she would manage 1+2=3 by denumbering all again from scratch. I'm worried actually... :'( meh..
    – v.oddou
    Apr 3, 2014 at 8:07
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    O(kitchen floor) haha - but wouldn't that be O(n^2) ?
    – user3235832
    Jul 9, 2016 at 15:42
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    O(m²) i guess :) Jun 26, 2017 at 12:19
  • sorting is definitely not O(n)
    – phuclv
    Apr 7, 2019 at 3:49
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    @phuclv: the answer stated that "This has a space requirement of O(kitchen floor)". But in any case, this is an instance where sorting can be achieved in O(n) time --- see this discussion. Apr 23, 2019 at 11:03
153

As @j_random_hacker pointed out, this is quite similar to Finding duplicates in O(n) time and O(1) space, and an adaptation of my answer there works here too.

Assuming that the "bag" is represented by a 1-based array A[] of size N - k, we can solve Qk in O(N) time and O(k) additional space.

First, we extend our array A[] by k elements, so that it is now of size N. This is the O(k) additional space. We then run the following pseudo-code algorithm:

for i := n - k + 1 to n
    A[i] := A[1]
end for

for i := 1 to n - k
    while A[A[i]] != A[i] 
        swap(A[i], A[A[i]])
    end while
end for

for i := 1 to n
    if A[i] != i then 
        print i
    end if
end for

The first loop initialises the k extra entries to the same as the first entry in the array (this is just a convenient value that we know is already present in the array - after this step, any entries that were missing in the initial array of size N-k are still missing in the extended array).

The second loop permutes the extended array so that if element x is present at least once, then one of those entries will be at position A[x].

Note that although it has a nested loop, it still runs in O(N) time - a swap only occurs if there is an i such that A[i] != i, and each swap sets at least one element such that A[i] == i, where that wasn't true before. This means that the total number of swaps (and thus the total number of executions of the while loop body) is at most N-1.

The third loop prints those indexes of the array i that are not occupied by the value i - this means that i must have been missing.

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    I wonder why so few people vote this answer up and even did not mark it as a correct answer. Here is the code in Python. It runs in O(n) time and need extra space O(k). pastebin.com/9jZqnTzV
    – wall-e
    Oct 22, 2012 at 4:03
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    @caf this is quite similar to setting the bits and counting the places where the bit is 0. And I think as you are creating an integer array more memory is occupied.
    – Fox
    Apr 22, 2013 at 6:41
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    "Setting the bits and counting the places where the bit is 0" requires O(n) extra space, this solution shows how to use O(k) extra space.
    – caf
    Dec 12, 2013 at 23:19
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    Doesn't work with streams as input and modifies the input array (though I like it very much and the idea is fruitful).
    – comco
    Jan 30, 2014 at 14:07
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    @v.oddou: Nope, it's fine. The swap will change A[i], which means that the next iteration won't be comparing the same two values as the previous one. The new A[i] will be the same as the last loop's A[A[i]], but the new A[A[i]] will be a new value. Try it and see.
    – caf
    Apr 3, 2014 at 10:55
38

Not sure, if it's the most efficient solution, but I would loop over all entries, and use a bitset to remember, which numbers are set, and then test for 0 bits.

I like simple solutions - and I even believe, that it might be faster than calculating the sum, or the sum of squares etc.

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    I did propose this obvious answer, but this is not what the interviewer wanted. I explicitly said in the question that this is not the answer I'm looking for. Another obvious answer: sort first. Neither the O(N) counting sort nor O(N log N) comparison sort is what I'm looking for, although they are both very simple solutions. Aug 16, 2010 at 11:14
  • @polygenelubricants: I can't find where you said that in your question. If you consider the bitset to be the result, then there is no second pass. The complexity is (if we consider N to be constant, as the interviewer suggests by saying, that the complexity is "defined in k not N") O(1), and if you need to construct a more "clean" result, you get O(k), which is the best you can get, because you always need O(k) to create the clean result. Aug 16, 2010 at 11:20
  • "Note that I'm not looking for the obvious set-based solution (e.g. using a bit set,". The second last paragraph from the original question.
    – hrnt
    Aug 16, 2010 at 11:24
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    @hmt: Yes, the question was edited a few minutes ago. I'm just giving the answer, that I would expect from an interviewee... Artificially constructing a sub-optimal solution (you can't beat O(n) + O(k) time, no matter what you do) doesn't make sense to me - except if you can't afford O(n) additional space, but the question isn't explicit on that. Aug 16, 2010 at 11:30
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    I've edited the question again to further clarify. I do appreciate the feedback/answer. Aug 16, 2010 at 11:42
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I haven't checked the maths, but I suspect that computing Σ(n^2) in the same pass as we compute Σ(n) would provide enough info to get two missing numbers, Do Σ(n^3) as well if there are three, and so on.

0
19

The problem with solutions based on sums of numbers is they don't take into account the cost of storing and working with numbers with large exponents... in practice, for it to work for very large n, a big numbers library would be used. We can analyse the space utilisation for these algorithms.

We can analyse the time and space complexity of sdcvvc and Dimitris Andreou's algorithms.

Storage:

l_j = ceil (log_2 (sum_{i=1}^n i^j))
l_j > log_2 n^j  (assuming n >= 0, k >= 0)
l_j > j log_2 n \in \Omega(j log n)

l_j < log_2 ((sum_{i=1}^n i)^j) + 1
l_j < j log_2 (n) + j log_2 (n + 1) - j log_2 (2) + 1
l_j < j log_2 n + j + c \in O(j log n)`

So l_j \in \Theta(j log n)

Total storage used: \sum_{j=1}^k l_j \in \Theta(k^2 log n)

Space used: assuming that computing a^j takes ceil(log_2 j) time, total time:

t = k ceil(\sum_i=1^n log_2 (i)) = k ceil(log_2 (\prod_i=1^n (i)))
t > k log_2 (n^n + O(n^(n-1)))
t > k log_2 (n^n) = kn log_2 (n)  \in \Omega(kn log n)
t < k log_2 (\prod_i=1^n i^i) + 1
t < kn log_2 (n) + 1 \in O(kn log n)

Total time used: \Theta(kn log n)

If this time and space is satisfactory, you can use a simple recursive algorithm. Let b!i be the ith entry in the bag, n the number of numbers before removals, and k the number of removals. In Haskell syntax...

let
  -- O(1)
  isInRange low high v = (v >= low) && (v <= high)
  -- O(n - k)
  countInRange low high = sum $ map (fromEnum . isInRange low high . (!)b) [1..(n-k)]
  findMissing l low high krange
    -- O(1) if there is nothing to find.
    | krange=0 = l
    -- O(1) if there is only one possibility.
    | low=high = low:l
    -- Otherwise total of O(knlog(n)) time
    | otherwise =
       let
         mid = (low + high) `div` 2
         klow = countInRange low mid
         khigh = krange - klow
       in
         findMissing (findMissing low mid klow) (mid + 1) high khigh
in
  findMising 1 (n - k) k

Storage used: O(k) for list, O(log(n)) for stack: O(k + log(n)) This algorithm is more intuitive, has the same time complexity, and uses less space.

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    +1, looks nice but you lost me going from line 4 to line 5 in snippet #1 -- could you explain that further? Thanks! Oct 28, 2010 at 8:16
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    isInRange is O(log n), not O(1): it compares numbers in range 1..n, so it has to compare O(log n) bits. I don't know to what extent this error affects the rest of the analysis. Nov 24, 2018 at 12:31
16

A very simple solution to Q2 which I'm surprised nobody answered already. Use the method from Q1 to find the sum of the two missing numbers. Let's denote it by S, then one of the missing numbers is smaller than S/2 and the other is bigger than S/2 (duh). Sum all the numbers from 1 to S/2 and compare it to the formula's result (similarly to the method in Q1) to find the lower between the missing numbers. Subtract it from S to find the bigger missing number.

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    I think this is the same as Svalorzen's answer, but you explained it in better words. Have any idea how to generalize it to Qk? Apr 21, 2020 at 14:59
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    Sorry for missing the other answer. I'm not sure if it's possible to generalize it to $Q_k$ since in that case you cannot bound the smallest missing element to some range. You do know that some element must be smaller than $S/k$ but that might be true for multiple elements Apr 22, 2020 at 15:10
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    How about this for Q_k: After bisecting at the average, if you count the summands while taking the sum at side of the bisection, you will know the amount of numbers missing on each side - and the problem has been reduced to Q_l on the left side and Q_r on the right side, where l + r = k where l < k and r < k by the same reasoning as in the answer - so these can be solved recursively. Apr 28, 2021 at 8:38
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Wait a minute. As the question is stated, there are 100 numbers in the bag. No matter how big k is, the problem can be solved in constant time because you can use a set and remove numbers from the set in at most 100 - k iterations of a loop. 100 is constant. The set of remaining numbers is your answer.

If we generalise the solution to the numbers from 1 to N, nothing changes except N is not a constant, so we are in O(N - k) = O(N) time. For instance, if we use a bit set, we set the bits to 1 in O(N) time, iterate through the numbers, setting the bits to 0 as we go (O(N-k) = O(N)) and then we have the answer.

It seems to me that the interviewer was asking you how to print out the contents of the final set in O(k) time rather than O(N) time. Clearly, with a bit set, you have to iterate through all N bits to determine whether you should print the number or not. However, if you change the way the set is implemented you can print out the numbers in k iterations. This is done by putting the numbers into an object to be stored in both a hash set and a doubly linked list. When you remove an object from the hash set, you also remove it from the list. The answers will be left in the list which is now of length k.

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    This answer is too simple, and we all know that simple answers don't work! ;) Seriously though, original question should probably emphasize O(k) space requirement.
    – DK.
    Sep 2, 2010 at 20:48
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    The problem is not that is simple but that you'll have to use O(n) additional memory for the map. The problem bust me solved in constant time and constant memory
    – Mojo Risin
    Mar 14, 2011 at 14:58
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    I bet you can prove the minimal solution is at least O(N). because less, would mean that you didn't even LOOK at some numbers, and since there is no ordering specified, looking at ALL numbers is mandatory.
    – v.oddou
    Apr 3, 2014 at 8:12
  • If we look at the input as a stream, and n is too large to keep in memory, the O(k) memory requirement makes sense. We can still use hashing though: Just make k^2 buckets and use the simple sum algorithm on each of them. That's only k^2 memory and a few more buckets can be used to get high probability of success. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:31
8

To solve the 2 (and 3) missing numbers question, you can modify quickselect, which on average runs in O(n) and uses constant memory if partitioning is done in-place.

  1. Partition the set with respect to a random pivot p into partitions l, which contain numbers smaller than the pivot, and r, which contain numbers greater than the pivot.

  2. Determine which partitions the 2 missing numbers are in by comparing the pivot value to the size of each partition (p - 1 - count(l) = count of missing numbers in l and n - count(r) - p = count of missing numbers in r)

  3. a) If each partition is missing one number, then use the difference of sums approach to find each missing number.

    (1 + 2 + ... + (p-1)) - sum(l) = missing #1 and ((p+1) + (p+2) ... + n) - sum(r) = missing #2

    b) If one partition is missing both numbers and the partition is empty, then the missing numbers are either (p-1,p-2) or (p+1,p+2) depending on which partition is missing the numbers.

    If one partition is missing 2 numbers but is not empty, then recurse onto that partiton.

With only 2 missing numbers, this algorithm always discards at least one partition, so it retains O(n) average time complexity of quickselect. Similarly, with 3 missing numbers this algorithm also discards at least one partition with each pass (because as with 2 missing numbers, at most only 1 partition will contain multiple missing numbers). However, I'm not sure how much the performance decreases when more missing numbers are added.

Here's an implementation that does not use in-place partitioning, so this example does not meet the space requirement but it does illustrate the steps of the algorithm:

<?php

  $list = range(1,100);
  unset($list[3]);
  unset($list[31]);

  findMissing($list,1,100);

  function findMissing($list, $min, $max) {
    if(empty($list)) {
      print_r(range($min, $max));
      return;
    }

    $l = $r = [];
    $pivot = array_pop($list);

    foreach($list as $number) {
      if($number < $pivot) {
        $l[] = $number;
      }
      else {
        $r[] = $number;
      }
    }

    if(count($l) == $pivot - $min - 1) {
      // only 1 missing number use difference of sums
      print array_sum(range($min, $pivot-1)) - array_sum($l) . "\n";
    }
    else if(count($l) < $pivot - $min) {
      // more than 1 missing number, recurse
      findMissing($l, $min, $pivot-1);
    }

    if(count($r) == $max - $pivot - 1) {
      // only 1 missing number use difference of sums
      print array_sum(range($pivot + 1, $max)) - array_sum($r) . "\n";
    } else if(count($r) < $max - $pivot) {
      // mroe than 1 missing number recurse
      findMissing($r, $pivot+1, $max);
    }
  }

Demo

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  • Partitioning the set is like using linear space. At least it wouldn't work in a streaming setting. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:44
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    @ThomasAhle see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_algorithm#Space_complexity. partioning the set in place only requires O(1) additional space - not linear space. In a streaming setting it would be O(k) additional space, however, the original question does not mention streaming.
    – FuzzyTree
    Apr 26, 2016 at 14:37
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    @ThomasAhle I think it's a big leap to conclude that "you must scan the input in O(N), but you can only capture small amount of information (defined in terms of k not N)" means op implied the data is being streamed. I interpret it simply as "Your answer must run in O(N) and only use O(k) extra storage" and I would certainly disagree that it's the definition of streaming.
    – FuzzyTree
    Apr 26, 2016 at 15:33
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    But as you say, the performance may decrease as more numbers are added? We can also use the linear time median algorithm, to always get a perfect cut, but if the k numbers are well spread out in 1,...,n, wont you have to go about logk levels "deep" before you can prune any branches? Apr 26, 2016 at 22:01
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    The worst-case running time is indeed nlogk because you need to process the whole input at most logk times, and then it's a geometric sequence (one that starts with at most n elements). The space requirements are logn when implemented with plain recursion, but they can be made O(1) by running an actual quickselect and ensuring the correct length of each partition.
    – emu
    May 4, 2016 at 8:04
8

For Q2 this is a solution that is a bit more inefficient than the others, but still has O(N) runtime and takes O(k) space.

The idea is to run the original algorithm two times. In the first one you get a total number which is missing, which gives you an upper bound of the missing numbers. Let's call this number N. You know that the missing two numbers are going to sum up to N, so the first number can only be in the interval [1, floor((N-1)/2)] while the second is going to be in [floor(N/2)+1,N-1].

Thus you loop on all numbers once again, discarding all numbers that are not included in the first interval. The ones that are, you keep track of their sum. Finally, you'll know one of the missing two numbers, and by extension the second.

I have a feeling that this method could be generalized and maybe multiple searches run in "parallel" during a single pass over the input, but I haven't yet figured out how.

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    Ahaha yes this is the same solution I came up with for Q2, just with calculating the sum again taking the negatives for all numbers below N/2, but this is even better!
    – xjcl
    Apr 8, 2019 at 14:51
  • 1
    I know' it's four years later, but I figured out how to generalise this (and yes, you could use parallelism to speed it up): stackoverflow.com/a/64285525/8658157
    – Elliott
    Oct 9, 2020 at 18:44
8

Here's a solution that uses k bits of extra storage, without any clever tricks and just straightforward. Execution time O (n), extra space O (k). Just to prove that this can be solved without reading up on the solution first or being a genius:

void puzzle (int* data, int n, bool* extra, int k)
{
    // data contains n distinct numbers from 1 to n + k, extra provides
    // space for k extra bits. 

    // Rearrange the array so there are (even) even numbers at the start
    // and (odd) odd numbers at the end.
    int even = 0, odd = 0;
    while (even + odd < n)
    {
        if (data [even] % 2 == 0) ++even;
        else if (data [n - 1 - odd] % 2 == 1) ++odd;
        else { int tmp = data [even]; data [even] = data [n - 1 - odd]; 
               data [n - 1 - odd] = tmp; ++even; ++odd; }
    }

    // Erase the lowest bits of all numbers and set the extra bits to 0.
    for (int i = even; i < n; ++i) data [i] -= 1;
    for (int i = 0; i < k; ++i) extra [i] = false;

    // Set a bit for every number that is present
    for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
    {
        int tmp = data [i];
        tmp -= (tmp % 2);
        if (i >= even) ++tmp;
        if (tmp <= n) data [tmp - 1] += 1; else extra [tmp - n - 1] = true;
    }

    // Print out the missing ones
    for (int i = 1; i <= n; ++i)
        if (data [i - 1] % 2 == 0) printf ("Number %d is missing\n", i);
    for (int i = n + 1; i <= n + k; ++i)
        if (! extra [i - n - 1]) printf ("Number %d is missing\n", i);

    // Restore the lowest bits again.
    for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
        if (i < even) { if (data [i] % 2 != 0) data [i] -= 1; }
        else { if (data [i] % 2 == 0) data [i] += 1; }
    }
}
9
  • Did you want (data [n - 1 - odd] % 2 == 1) ++odd;?
    – Charles
    Apr 12, 2014 at 13:36
  • 2
    Could you explain how this works? I don't understand.
    – Teepeemm
    Sep 26, 2014 at 14:03
  • The solution would be very, very, simple if I could use an array of (n + k) booleans for temporary storage, but that is not allowed. So I rearrange the data, putting the even numbers at the beginning, and the odd numbers at the end of the array. Now the lowest bits of those n numbers can be used for temporary storage, because I know how many even and odd numbers there are and can reconstruct the lowest bits! These n bits and the k extra bits are exactly the (n + k) booleans that I needed.
    – gnasher729
    Oct 15, 2014 at 16:40
  • 3
    This wouldn't work if the data were too large to keep in memory, and you only saw it as a stream. Deliciously hacky though :) Apr 26, 2016 at 13:59
  • The space complexity can be O(1). In a first pass, you process all numbers < (n - k) by exactly this algorithm, without using 'extra'. In a second pass, you clear out the parity bits again and use the first k positions for indexing numbers (n-k)..(n).
    – emu
    May 4, 2016 at 8:12
8

Motivation

If you want to solve the general-case problem, and you can store and edit the array, then Caf's solution is by far the most efficient. If you can't store the array (streaming version), then sdcvvc's answer is the only type of solution currently suggested.

The solution I propose is the most efficient answer (so far on this thread) if you can store the array but can't edit it, and I got the idea from Svalorzen's solution, which solves for 1 or 2 missing items. This solution takes Θ(k*n) time and O(min(k,log(n))) and Ω(log(k)) space. It also works well with parallelism.

Concept

The idea is that if you use the original approach of comparing sums:
sum = SumOf(1,n) - SumOf(array)

... then you take the average of the missing numbers:
average = sum/n_missing_numbers

... which provides a boundary: Of the missing numbers, there's guaranteed to be at least one number less-or-equal to average, and at least one number greater than average. This means that we can split into sub problems that each scan the array [O(n)] and are only concerned with their respective sub-arrays.

Code

C-style solution (don't judge me for the global variables, I'm just trying to make the code readable for non-c folks):

#include "stdio.h"

// Example problem:
const int array [] = {0, 7, 3, 1, 5};
const int N = 8; // size of original array
const int array_size = 5;

int SumOneTo (int n)
{
    return n*(n-1)/2; // non-inclusive
}

int MissingItems (const int begin, const int end, int & average)
{
    // We consider only sub-array elements with values, v:
    // begin <= v < end
    
    // Initialise info about missing elements.
    // First assume all are missing:
    int n = end - begin;
    int sum = SumOneTo(end) - SumOneTo(begin);

    // Minus everything that we see (ie not missing):
    for (int i = 0; i < array_size; ++i)
    {
        if ((begin <= array[i]) && (array[i] < end))
        {
            --n;
            sum -= array[i];
        }
    }
    
    // used by caller:
    average = sum/n;
    return n;
}

void Find (const int begin, const int end)
{
    int average;

    if (MissingItems(begin, end, average) == 1)
    {
        printf(" %d", average); // average(n) is same as n
        return;
    }
    
    Find(begin, average + 1); // at least one missing here
    Find(average + 1, end); // at least one here also
}

int main ()
{   
    printf("Missing items:");
    
    Find(0, N);
    
    printf("\n");
}

Analysis

Ignoring recursion for a moment, each function call clearly takes O(n) time and O(1) space. Note that sum can equal as much as n(n-1)/2, so requires double the amount of bits needed to store n-1. At most this means than we effectively need two extra elements worth of space, regardless of the size of the array or k, hence it's still O(1) space under the normal conventions.

It's not so obvious how many function calls there are for k missing elements, so I'll provide a visual. Your original sub-array (connected array) is the full array, which has all k missing elements in it. We'll imagine them in increasing order, where -- represent connections (part of same sub-array):

m1 -- m2 -- m3 -- m4 -- (...) -- mk-1 -- mk

The effect of the Find function is to disconnect the missing elements into different non-overlapping sub-arrays. It guarantees that there's at least one missing element in each sub-array, which means breaking exactly one connection.

What this means is that regardless of how the splits occur, it will always take k-1 Find function calls to do the work of finding the sub-arrays that have only one missing element in it.

So the time complexity is Θ((k-1 + k) * n) = Θ(k*n).

For the space complexity, if we divide proportionally each time then we get O(log(k)) space complexity, but if we only separate one at a time it gives us O(k).

See here for a proof as to why the space complexity is O(log(n)). Given that above we've shown that it's also O(k), then we know that it's O(min(k,log(n))).

6

May be this algorithm can work for question 1:

  1. Precompute xor of first 100 integers(val=1^2^3^4....100)
  2. xor the elements as they keep coming from input stream ( val1=val1^next_input)
  3. final answer=val^val1

Or even better:

def GetValue(A)
  val=0
  for i=1 to 100
    do
      val=val^i
    done
  for value in A:
    do
      val=val^value 
    done
  return val

This algorithm can in fact be expanded for two missing numbers. The first step remains the same. When we call GetValue with two missing numbers the result will be a a1^a2 are the two missing numbers. Lets say

val = a1^a2

Now to sieve out a1 and a2 from val we take any set bit in val. Lets say the ith bit is set in val. That means that a1 and a2 have different parity at ith bit position. Now we do another iteration on the original array and keep two xor values. One for the numbers which have the ith bit set and other which doesn't have the ith bit set. We now have two buckets of numbers, and its guranteed that a1 and a2 will lie in different buckets. Now repeat the same what we did for finding one missing element on each of the bucket.

5
  • This only solves the problem for k=1, right? But I like using xor over sums, it seems a bit faster. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:52
  • @ThomasAhle Yes. I have called that out in my answer.
    – bashrc
    Apr 26, 2016 at 16:29
  • Right. Do you have an idea what a "second order" xor might be, for k=2? Similar to using squares for sum, could we "square" for xor? Apr 26, 2016 at 16:32
  • 2
    @ThomasAhle Modified it to work for 2 missing numbers.
    – bashrc
    May 4, 2016 at 4:21
  • 1
    this is my favourite way :)
    – Rusty Rob
    Jan 25, 2018 at 0:25
5

There is a general way to solve streaming problems like this. The idea is to use a bit of randomization to hopefully 'spread' the k elements into independent sub problems, where our original algorithm solves the problem for us. This technique is used in sparse signal reconstruction, among other things.

  • Make an array, a, of size u = k^2.
  • Pick any universal hash function, h : {1,...,n} -> {1,...,u}. (Like multiply-shift)
  • For each i in 1, ..., n increase a[h(i)] += i
  • For each number x in the input stream, decrement a[h(x)] -= x.

If all of the missing numbers have been hashed to different buckets, the non-zero elements of the array will now contain the missing numbers.

The probability that a particular pair is sent to the same bucket, is less than 1/u by definition of a universal hash function. Since there are about k^2/2 pairs, we have that the error probability is at most k^2/2/u=1/2. That is, we succeed with probability at least 50%, and if we increase u we increase our chances.

Notice that this algorithm takes k^2 logn bits of space (We need logn bits per array bucket.) This matches the space required by @Dimitris Andreou's answer (In particular the space requirement of polynomial factorization, which happens to also be randomized.) This algorithm also has constant time per update, rather than time k in the case of power-sums.

In fact, we can be even more efficient than the power sum method by using the trick described in the comments.

4
  • Note: We can also use xor in each bucket, rather than sum, if that's faster on our machine. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:53
  • Interesting but I think this only respects the space constraint when k <= sqrt(n) - at least if u=k^2? Suppose k=11 and n=100, then you would have 121 buckets and the algorithm would end up being similar to having an array of 100 bits that you check off as you read each # from the stream. Increasing u improves the chances of success but there's a limit to how much you can increase it before you exceed the space constraint.
    – FuzzyTree
    Apr 27, 2016 at 2:18
  • 1
    The problem makes most sense for n much larger than k, I think, but you can actually get space down to k logn with a method very similar to the hashing described, while still having constant time updates. It's described in gnunet.org/eppstein-set-reconciliation , like the sum of powers method, but basically you hash to 'two of k' buckets with a strong hash function like tabulation hashing, which guarantees that some bucket will have only one element. To decode, you identify that bucket and removes the element from both of its buckets, which (likely) frees another bucket and so on May 11, 2016 at 10:54
  • A variant which is slower but uses less space: If you use 2k buckets, you can find some of the missing numbers, and you can repeat (with a different univ hash each time) to find the rest (you can consider already-found numbers as if they were in the array for additional speedup). If I've done my sums right, this takes O(log(k)) iterations on average, for O(n log k) expected time, and O(k log n) space. There's a bit of extra bookkeeping because you need to store the already-found numbers. Aug 24, 2022 at 15:47
4

Can you check if every number exists? If yes you may try this:

S = sum of all numbers in the bag (S < 5050)
Z = sum of the missing numbers 5050 - S

if the missing numbers are x and y then:

x = Z - y and
max(x) = Z - 1

So you check the range from 1 to max(x) and find the number

3
  • 2
    What does max(x) mean, when x is a number? Apr 26, 2016 at 13:56
  • 2
    he probably means max from the set of numbers
    – JavaHopper
    Aug 9, 2016 at 16:22
  • if we have more than 2 numbers this solution would be busted
    – ozgeneral
    Jan 29, 2020 at 9:14
3

You can solve Q2 if you have the sum of both lists and the product of both lists.

(l1 is the original, l2 is the modified list)

d = sum(l1) - sum(l2)
m = mul(l1) / mul(l2)

We can optimise this since the sum of an arithmetic series is n times the average of the first and last terms:

n = len(l1)
d = (n/2)*(n+1) - sum(l2)

Now we know that (if a and b are the removed numbers):

a + b = d
a * b = m

So we can rearrange to:

a = s - b
b * (s - b) = m

And multiply out:

-b^2 + s*b = m

And rearrange so the right side is zero:

-b^2 + s*b - m = 0

Then we can solve with the quadratic formula:

b = (-s + sqrt(s^2 - (4*-1*-m)))/-2
a = s - b

Sample Python 3 code:

from functools import reduce
import operator
import math
x = list(range(1,21))
sx = (len(x)/2)*(len(x)+1)
x.remove(15)
x.remove(5)
mul = lambda l: reduce(operator.mul,l)
s = sx - sum(x)
m = mul(range(1,21)) / mul(x)
b = (-s + math.sqrt(s**2 - (-4*(-m))))/-2
a = s - b
print(a,b) #15,5

I do not know the complexity of the sqrt, reduce and sum functions so I cannot work out the complexity of this solution (if anyone does know please comment below.)

3
  • How much time and memory does it use to calculate x1*x2*x3*...? Apr 26, 2016 at 13:57
  • @ThomasAhle It is O(n)-time and O(1)-space on the length of the list, but in reality it's more as multiplication (at least in Python) is O(n^1.6)-time on the length of the number and numbers are O(log n)-space on their length. Apr 29, 2016 at 16:21
  • @ThomasAhle No, log(a^n) = n*log(a) so you would have O(l log k)-space to store the number. So given a list of length l and original numbers of length k, you would have O(l)-space but the constant factor (log k) would be lower than just writing them all out. (I don't think my method is a particularly good way of answering the question.) Apr 29, 2016 at 17:16
3

Here is a solution that doesn't rely on complex math as sdcvvc's/Dimitris Andreou's answers do, doesn't change the input array as caf and Colonel Panic did, and doesn't use the bitset of enormous size as Chris Lercher, JeremyP and many others did. Basically, I began with Svalorzen's/Gilad Deutch's idea for Q2, generalized it to the common case Qk and implemented in Java to prove that the algorithm works.

The idea

Suppose we have an arbitrary interval I of which we only know that it contains at least one of the missing numbers. After one pass through the input array, looking only at the numbers from I, we can obtain both the sum S and the quantity Q of missing numbers from I. We do this by simply decrementing I's length each time we encounter a number from I (for obtaining Q) and by decreasing pre-calculated sum of all numbers in I by that encountered number each time (for obtaining S).

Now we look at S and Q. If Q = 1, it means that then I contains only one of the missing numbers, and this number is clearly S. We mark I as finished (it is called "unambiguous" in the program) and leave it out from further consideration. On the other hand, if Q > 1, we can calculate the average A = S / Q of missing numbers contained in I. As all numbers are distinct, at least one of such numbers is strictly less than A and at least one is strictly greater than A. Now we split I in A into two smaller intervals each of which contains at least one missing number. Note that it doesn't matter to which of the intervals we assign A in case it is an integer.

We make the next array pass calculating S and Q for each of the intervals separately (but in the same pass) and after that mark intervals with Q = 1 and split intervals with Q > 1. We continue this process until there are no new "ambiguous" intervals, i.e. we have nothing to split because each interval contains exactly one missing number (and we always know this number because we know S). We start out from the sole "whole range" interval containing all possible numbers (like [1..N] in the question).

Time and space complexity analysis

The total number of passes p we need to make until the process stops is never greater than the missing numbers count k. The inequality p <= k can be proved rigorously. On the other hand, there is also an empirical upper bound p < log2N + 3 that is useful for large values of k. We need to make a binary search for each number of the input array to determine the interval to which it belongs. This adds the log k multiplier to the time complexity.

In total, the time complexity is O(N ᛫ min(k, log N) ᛫ log k). Note that for large k, this is significantly better than that of sdcvvc/Dimitris Andreou's method, which is O(N ᛫ k).

For its work, the algorithm requires O(k) additional space for storing at most k intervals, that is significantly better than O(N) in "bitset" solutions.

Java implementation

Here's a Java class that implements the above algorithm. It always returns a sorted array of missing numbers. Besides that, it doesn't require the missing numbers count k because it calculates it in the first pass. The whole range of numbers is given by the minNumber and maxNumber parameters (e.g. 1 and 100 for the first example in the question).

public class MissingNumbers {
    private static class Interval {
        boolean ambiguous = true;
        final int begin;
        int quantity;
        long sum;

        Interval(int begin, int end) { // begin inclusive, end exclusive
            this.begin = begin;
            quantity = end - begin;
            sum = quantity * ((long)end - 1 + begin) / 2;
        }

        void exclude(int x) {
            quantity--;
            sum -= x;
        }
    }

    public static int[] find(int minNumber, int maxNumber, NumberBag inputBag) {
        Interval full = new Interval(minNumber, ++maxNumber);
        for (inputBag.startOver(); inputBag.hasNext();)
            full.exclude(inputBag.next());
        int missingCount = full.quantity;
        if (missingCount == 0)
            return new int[0];
        Interval[] intervals = new Interval[missingCount];
        intervals[0] = full;
        int[] dividers = new int[missingCount];
        dividers[0] = minNumber;
        int intervalCount = 1;
        while (true) {
            int oldCount = intervalCount;
            for (int i = 0; i < oldCount; i++) {
                Interval itv = intervals[i];
                if (itv.ambiguous)
                    if (itv.quantity == 1) // number inside itv uniquely identified
                        itv.ambiguous = false;
                    else
                        intervalCount++; // itv will be split into two intervals
            }
            if (oldCount == intervalCount)
                break;
            int newIndex = intervalCount - 1;
            int end = maxNumber;
            for (int oldIndex = oldCount - 1; oldIndex >= 0; oldIndex--) {
                // newIndex always >= oldIndex
                Interval itv = intervals[oldIndex];
                int begin = itv.begin;
                if (itv.ambiguous) {
                    // split interval itv
                    // use floorDiv instead of / because input numbers can be negative
                    int mean = (int)Math.floorDiv(itv.sum, itv.quantity) + 1;
                    intervals[newIndex--] = new Interval(mean, end);
                    intervals[newIndex--] = new Interval(begin, mean);
                } else
                    intervals[newIndex--] = itv;
                end = begin;
            }
            for (int i = 0; i < intervalCount; i++)
                dividers[i] = intervals[i].begin;
            for (inputBag.startOver(); inputBag.hasNext();) {
                int x = inputBag.next();
                // find the interval to which x belongs
                int i = java.util.Arrays.binarySearch(dividers, 0, intervalCount, x);
                if (i < 0)
                    i = -i - 2;
                Interval itv = intervals[i];
                if (itv.ambiguous)
                    itv.exclude(x);
            }
        }
        assert intervalCount == missingCount;
        for (int i = 0; i < intervalCount; i++)
            dividers[i] = (int)intervals[i].sum;
        return dividers;
    }
}

For fairness, this class receives input in form of NumberBag objects. NumberBag doesn't allow array modification and random access and also counts how many times the array was requested for sequential traversing. It is also more suitable for large array testing than Iterable<Integer> because it avoids boxing of primitive int values and allows wrapping a part of a large int[] for a convenient test preparation. It is not hard to replace, if desired, NumberBag by int[] or Iterable<Integer> type in the find signature, by changing two for-loops in it into foreach ones.

import java.util.*;

public abstract class NumberBag {
    private int passCount;

    public void startOver() {
        passCount++;
    }

    public final int getPassCount() {
        return passCount;
    }

    public abstract boolean hasNext();

    public abstract int next();

    // A lightweight version of Iterable<Integer> to avoid boxing of int
    public static NumberBag fromArray(int[] base, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
        return new NumberBag() {
            int index = toIndex;

            public void startOver() {
                super.startOver();
                index = fromIndex;
            }

            public boolean hasNext() {
                return index < toIndex;
            }

            public int next() {
                if (index >= toIndex)
                    throw new NoSuchElementException();
                return base[index++];
            }
        };
    }

    public static NumberBag fromArray(int[] base) {
        return fromArray(base, 0, base.length);
    }

    public static NumberBag fromIterable(Iterable<Integer> base) {
        return new NumberBag() {
            Iterator<Integer> it;

            public void startOver() {
                super.startOver();
                it = base.iterator();
            }

            public boolean hasNext() {
                return it.hasNext();
            }

            public int next() {
                return it.next();
            }
        };
    }
}

Tests

Simple examples demonstrating the usage of these classes are given below.

import java.util.*;

public class SimpleTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int[] input = { 7, 1, 4, 9, 6, 2 };
        NumberBag bag = NumberBag.fromArray(input);
        int[] output = MissingNumbers.find(1, 10, bag);
        System.out.format("Input: %s%nMissing numbers: %s%nPass count: %d%n",
                Arrays.toString(input), Arrays.toString(output), bag.getPassCount());

        List<Integer> inputList = new ArrayList<>();
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
            inputList.add(2 * i);
        Collections.shuffle(inputList);
        bag = NumberBag.fromIterable(inputList);
        output = MissingNumbers.find(0, 19, bag);
        System.out.format("%nInput: %s%nMissing numbers: %s%nPass count: %d%n",
                inputList, Arrays.toString(output), bag.getPassCount());

        // Sieve of Eratosthenes
        final int MAXN = 1_000;
        List<Integer> nonPrimes = new ArrayList<>();
        nonPrimes.add(1);
        int[] primes;
        int lastPrimeIndex = 0;
        while (true) {
            primes = MissingNumbers.find(1, MAXN, NumberBag.fromIterable(nonPrimes));
            int p = primes[lastPrimeIndex]; // guaranteed to be prime
            int q = p;
            for (int i = lastPrimeIndex++; i < primes.length; i++) {
                q = primes[i]; // not necessarily prime
                int pq = p * q;
                if (pq > MAXN)
                    break;
                nonPrimes.add(pq);
            }
            if (q == p)
                break;
        }
        System.out.format("%nSieve of Eratosthenes. %d primes up to %d found:%n",
                primes.length, MAXN);
        for (int i = 0; i < primes.length; i++)
            System.out.format(" %4d%s", primes[i], (i % 10) < 9 ? "" : "\n");
    }
}

Large array testing can be performed this way:

import java.util.*;

public class BatchTest {
    private static final Random rand = new Random();
    public static int MIN_NUMBER = 1;
    private final int minNumber = MIN_NUMBER;
    private final int numberCount;
    private final int[] numbers;
    private int missingCount;
    public long finderTime;

    public BatchTest(int numberCount) {
        this.numberCount = numberCount;
        numbers = new int[numberCount];
        for (int i = 0; i < numberCount; i++)
            numbers[i] = minNumber + i;
    }

    private int passBound() {
        int mBound = missingCount > 0 ? missingCount : 1;
        int nBound = 34 - Integer.numberOfLeadingZeros(numberCount - 1); // ceil(log_2(numberCount)) + 2
        return Math.min(mBound, nBound);
    }

    private void error(String cause) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Error on '" + missingCount + " from " + numberCount + "' test, " + cause);
    }

    // returns the number of times the input array was traversed in this test
    public int makeTest(int missingCount) {
        this.missingCount = missingCount;
        // numbers array is reused when numberCount stays the same,
        // just Fisher–Yates shuffle it for each test
        for (int i = numberCount - 1; i > 0; i--) {
            int j = rand.nextInt(i + 1);
            if (i != j) {
                int t = numbers[i];
                numbers[i] = numbers[j];
                numbers[j] = t;
            }
        }
        final int bagSize = numberCount - missingCount;
        NumberBag inputBag = NumberBag.fromArray(numbers, 0, bagSize);
        finderTime -= System.nanoTime();
        int[] found = MissingNumbers.find(minNumber, minNumber + numberCount - 1, inputBag);
        finderTime += System.nanoTime();
        if (inputBag.getPassCount() > passBound())
            error("too many passes (" + inputBag.getPassCount() + " while only " + passBound() + " allowed)");
        if (found.length != missingCount)
            error("wrong result length");
        int j = bagSize; // "missing" part beginning in numbers
        Arrays.sort(numbers, bagSize, numberCount);
        for (int i = 0; i < missingCount; i++)
            if (found[i] != numbers[j++])
                error("wrong result array, " + i + "-th element differs");
        return inputBag.getPassCount();
    }

    public static void strideCheck(int numberCount, int minMissing, int maxMissing, int step, int repeats) {
        BatchTest t = new BatchTest(numberCount);
        System.out.println("╠═══════════════════════╬═════════════════╬═════════════════╣");
        for (int missingCount = minMissing; missingCount <= maxMissing; missingCount += step) {
            int minPass = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
            int passSum = 0;
            int maxPass = 0;
            t.finderTime = 0;
            for (int j = 1; j <= repeats; j++) {
                int pCount = t.makeTest(missingCount);
                if (pCount < minPass)
                    minPass = pCount;
                passSum += pCount;
                if (pCount > maxPass)
                    maxPass = pCount;
            }
            System.out.format("║ %9d  %9d  ║  %2d  %5.2f  %2d  ║  %11.3f    ║%n", missingCount, numberCount, minPass,
                    (double)passSum / repeats, maxPass, t.finderTime * 1e-6 / repeats);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("╔═══════════════════════╦═════════════════╦═════════════════╗");
        System.out.println("║      Number count     ║      Passes     ║  Average time   ║");
        System.out.println("║   missimg     total   ║  min  avg   max ║ per search (ms) ║");
        long time = System.nanoTime();
        strideCheck(100, 0, 100, 1, 20_000);
        strideCheck(100_000, 2, 99_998, 1_282, 15);
        MIN_NUMBER = -2_000_000_000;
        strideCheck(300_000_000, 1, 10, 1, 1);
        time = System.nanoTime() - time;
        System.out.println("╚═══════════════════════╩═════════════════╩═════════════════╝");
        System.out.format("%nSuccess. Total time: %.2f s.%n", time * 1e-9);
    }
}

Try them out on Ideone

2

I think this can be done without any complex mathematical equations and theories. Below is a proposal for an in place and O(2n) time complexity solution:

Input form assumptions :

# of numbers in bag = n

# of missing numbers = k

The numbers in the bag are represented by an array of length n

Length of input array for the algo = n

Missing entries in the array (numbers taken out of the bag) are replaced by the value of the first element in the array.

Eg. Initially bag looks like [2,9,3,7,8,6,4,5,1,10]. If 4 is taken out, value of 4 will become 2 (the first element of the array). Therefore after taking 4 out the bag will look like [2,9,3,7,8,6,2,5,1,10]

The key to this solution is to tag the INDEX of a visited number by negating the value at that INDEX as the array is traversed.

    IEnumerable<int> GetMissingNumbers(int[] arrayOfNumbers)
    {
        List<int> missingNumbers = new List<int>();
        int arrayLength = arrayOfNumbers.Length;

        //First Pass
        for (int i = 0; i < arrayLength; i++)
        {
            int index = Math.Abs(arrayOfNumbers[i]) - 1;
            if (index > -1)
            {
                arrayOfNumbers[index] = Math.Abs(arrayOfNumbers[index]) * -1; //Marking the visited indexes
            }
        }

        //Second Pass to get missing numbers
        for (int i = 0; i < arrayLength; i++)
        {                
            //If this index is unvisited, means this is a missing number
            if (arrayOfNumbers[i] > 0)
            {
                missingNumbers.Add(i + 1);
            }
        }

        return missingNumbers;
    }
1
  • This uses too much memory. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:54
2

Thanks for this very interesting question:

It's because you reminded me Newton's work which really can solve this problem

Please refer Newton's Identities

As number of variables to find = number of equations (must for consistency)

I believe for this we should raise power to bag numbers so as to create number of different equations.

I don't know but, I believe if there should a function say f for which we'll add f( xi )

x1 + x2 + ... + xk = z1

x12 + x22 + ... + xk2 = z2

............

............

............

x1k + x2k + ... + xkk = zk

rest is a mathematical work not sure about time and space complexity but Newton's Identities will surely play important role.

  • Can't we use set theory .difference_update() or Is there any chance of Linear Algebra in this question method?
1

Very nice problem. I'd go for using a set difference for Qk. A lot of programming languages even have support for it, like in Ruby:

missing = (1..100).to_a - bag

It's probably not the most efficient solution but it's one I would use in real life if I was faced with such a task in this case (known boundaries, low boundaries). If the set of number would be very large then I would consider a more efficient algorithm, of course, but until then the simple solution would be enough for me.

3
  • 2
    This uses too much space. Apr 26, 2016 at 13:43
  • @ThomasAhle: Why are you adding useless comments to every second answer? What do you mean with it's using too much space?
    – DarkDust
    Apr 26, 2016 at 14:17
  • 2
    Because the question says that "We can't afford any additional space proportional to N." This solution does exactly that. Apr 26, 2016 at 14:25
1

You'd probably need clarification on what O(k) means.

Here's a trivial solution for arbitrary k: for each v in your set of numbers, accumulate the sum of 2^v. At the end, loop i from 1 to N. If sum bitwise ANDed with 2^i is zero, then i is missing. (Or numerically, if floor of the sum divided by 2^i is even. Or sum modulo 2^(i+1)) < 2^i.)

Easy, right? O(N) time, O(1) storage, and it supports arbitrary k.

Except that you're computing enormous numbers that on a real computer would each require O(N) space. In fact, this solution is identical to a bit vector.

So you could be clever and compute the sum and the sum of squares and the sum of cubes... up to the sum of v^k, and do the fancy math to extract the result. But those are big numbers too, which begs the question: what abstract model of operation are we talking about? How much fits in O(1) space, and how long does it take to sum up numbers of whatever size you need?

2
  • Nice answer! One little thing: "If sum modulo 2^i is zero, then i is missing" is incorrect. But it's clear what is intended. I think "if sum modulo 2^(i+1) is less than 2^i, then i is missing" would be correct. (Of course, in most programming languages we would use bit shifting instead of modulo calculation. Sometimes programming languages are a bit more expressive than the usual mathematic notation. :-) ) Nov 24, 2018 at 14:46
  • 2
    Thanks, you're totally right! Fixed, though I was lazy and strayed from mathematical notation... oh, and I messed that up too. Fixing again...
    – sfink
    Nov 27, 2018 at 1:17
1

I have read all thirty answers and found the simplest one i.e to use a bit array of 100 to be the best. But as the question said we can't use an array of size N, I would use O(1) space complexity and k iterations i.e O(NK) time complexity to solve this.

To make the explanation simpler, consider I have been given numbers from 1 to 15 and two of them are missing i.e 9 and 14 but I don't know. Let the bag look like this:

[8,1,2,12,4,7,5,10,11,13,15,3,6].

We know that each number is represented internally in the form of bits. For numbers till 16 we only need 4 bits. For numbers till 10^9, we will need 32 bits. But let's focus on 4 bits and then later we can generalize it.

Now, assume if we had all the numbers from 1 to 15, then internally, we would have numbers like this (if we had them ordered):

0001
0010
0011
0100
0101
0110
0111
1000
1001
1010
1011
1100
1101
1110
1111

But now we have two numbers missing. So our representation will look something like this (shown ordered for understanding but can be in any order):

(2MSD|2LSD)
00|01
00|10
00|11
-----
01|00
01|01
01|10
01|11
-----
10|00
missing=(10|01) 
10|10
10|11
-----
11|00
11|01
missing=(11|10)
11|11

Now let's make a bit array of size 2 that holds the count of numbers with corresponding 2 most significant digits. i.e

= [__,__,__,__] 
   00,01,10,11

Scan the bag from left and right and fill the above array such that each of bin of bit array contains the count of numbers. The result will be as under:

= [ 3, 4, 3, 3] 
   00,01,10,11

If all the numbers would have been present, it would have looked like this:

= [ 3, 4, 4, 4] 
   00,01,10,11

Thus we know that there are two numbers missing: one whose most 2 significant digits are 10 and one whose most 2 significant bits are 11. Now scan the list again and fill out a bit array of size 2 for the lower 2 significant digits. This time, only consider elements whose most 2 significant digits are 10. We will have the bit array as:

= [ 1, 0, 1, 1] 
   00,01,10,11

If all numbers of MSD=10 were present, we would have 1 in all the bins but now we see that one is missing. Thus we have the number whose MSD=10 and LSD=01 is missing which is 1001 i.e 9.

Similarly, if we scan again but consider only elements whose MSD=11,we get MSD=11 and LSD=10 missing which is 1110 i.e 14.

= [ 1, 0, 1, 1] 
   00,01,10,11

Thus, we can find the missing numbers in a constant amount of space. We can generalize this for 100, 1000 or 10^9 or any set of numbers.

References: Problem 1.6 in http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/afi-samples-new.pdf

3
  • Interesting. This is very similar to how Radix sort works. I'd say that you're trading space for time a bit here. You have O(1) space, but O(n*log(n)) time (as n grows, you'll have to consider more bits).
    – Elliott
    Sep 18, 2020 at 1:09
  • I don't think space is constant. If I understand correctly, you want to re-use the 4-element array for each input scan. But where do you store the results of the previous input scan? Jun 17, 2021 at 12:00
  • I think you could simplify the algorithm by using a 2-element array instead of a 4-element array. During input scan i, you only look at bit i (instead of two adjacent bits). Jun 17, 2021 at 12:03
0

You could try using a Bloom Filter. Insert each number in the bag into the bloom, then iterate over the complete 1-k set until reporting each one not found. This may not find the answer in all scenarios, but might be a good enough solution.

3
  • There is also the counting bloom filter, which allows deletion. Then you can just add all the numbers and delete the ones you see in the stream. Apr 25, 2016 at 21:31
  • Haha this is probably one of the more practical answers, but gets little attention.
    – ldog
    May 26, 2019 at 14:48
  • A Bloom Filter (BF) still takes linear space. As you say, it doesn't guarantee a solution. The better version of this is a boolean (bit) array, which takes the minimum amount of linear space, does it in O(n) time, and always gets the right answer. The BF is basically trying to make use of this technique when the key numbers are larger that the array size, which we don't have to worry about in our case, so there's no need for the compromise designed by the BF.
    – Elliott
    Sep 18, 2020 at 2:46
0

I'd take a different approach to that question and probe the interviewer for more details about the larger problem he's trying to solve. Depending on the problem and the requirements surrounding it, the obvious set-based solution might be the right thing and the generate-a-list-and-pick-through-it-afterward approach might not.

For example, it might be that the interviewer is going to dispatch n messages and needs to know the k that didn't result in a reply and needs to know it in as little wall clock time as possible after the n-kth reply arrives. Let's also say that the message channel's nature is such that even running at full bore, there's enough time to do some processing between messages without having any impact on how long it takes to produce the end result after the last reply arrives. That time can be put to use inserting some identifying facet of each sent message into a set and deleting it as each corresponding reply arrives. Once the last reply has arrived, the only thing to be done is to remove its identifier from the set, which in typical implementations takes O(log k+1). After that, the set contains the list of k missing elements and there's no additional processing to be done.

This certainly isn't the fastest approach for batch processing pre-generated bags of numbers because the whole thing runs O((log 1 + log 2 + ... + log n) + (log n + log n-1 + ... + log k)). But it does work for any value of k (even if it's not known ahead of time) and in the example above it was applied in a way that minimizes the most critical interval.

1
  • Would this work if you only have O(k^2) extra memory? Apr 26, 2016 at 13:50
0

This might sound stupid, but, in the first problem presented to you, you would have to see all the remaining numbers in the bag to actually add them up to find the missing number using that equation.

So, since you get to see all the numbers, just look for the number that's missing. The same goes for when two numbers are missing. Pretty simple I think. No point in using an equation when you get to see the numbers remaining in the bag.

3
  • 2
    I think the benefit of summing them up is that you don't have to remember which numbers you've already seen (e.g., there's no extra memory requirement). Otherwise the only option is to retain a set of all the values seen and then iterate over that set again to find the one that's missing.
    – Dan Tao
    Sep 2, 2010 at 23:00
  • 3
    This question is usually asked with the stipulation of O(1) space complexity.
    – Matthieu N.
    Sep 14, 2010 at 21:38
  • The sum of the first N numbers is N(N+1)/2. For N=100, Sum=100*(101)/2=5050 ;
    – tmarthal
    Apr 29, 2011 at 1:39
0

You can motivate the solution by thinking about it in terms of symmetries (groups, in math language). No matter the order of the set of numbers, the answer should be the same. If you're going to use k functions to help determine the missing elements, you should be thinking about what functions have that property: symmetric. The function s_1(x) = x_1 + x_2 + ... + x_n is an example of a symmetric function, but there are others of higher degree. In particular, consider the elementary symmetric functions. The elementary symmetric function of degree 2 is s_2(x) = x_1 x_2 + x_1 x_3 + ... + x_1 x_n + x_2 x_3 + ... + x_(n-1) x_n, the sum of all products of two elements. Similarly for the elementary symmetric functions of degree 3 and higher. They are obviously symmetric. Furthermore, it turns out they are the building blocks for all symmetric functions.

You can build the elementary symmetric functions as you go by noting that s_2(x,x_(n+1)) = s_2(x) + s_1(x)(x_(n+1)). Further thought should convince you that s_3(x,x_(n+1)) = s_3(x) + s_2(x)(x_(n+1)) and so on, so they can be computed in one pass.

How do we tell which items were missing from the array? Think about the polynomial (z-x_1)(z-x_2)...(z-x_n). It evaluates to 0 if you put in any of the numbers x_i. Expanding the polynomial, you get z^n-s_1(x)z^(n-1)+ ... + (-1)^n s_n. The elementary symmetric functions appear here too, which is really no surprise, since the polynomial should stay the same if we apply any permutation to the roots.

So we can build the polynomial and try to factor it to figure out which numbers are not in the set, as others have mentioned.

Finally, if we are concerned about overflowing memory with large numbers (the nth symmetric polynomial will be of the order 100!), we can do these calculations mod p where p is a prime bigger than 100. In that case we evaluate the polynomial mod p and find that it again evaluates to 0 when the input is a number in the set, and it evaluates to a non-zero value when the input is a number not in the set. However, as others have pointed out, to get the values out of the polynomial in time that depends on k, not N, we have to factor the polynomial mod p.

1
-1

I believe I have a O(k) time and O(log(k)) space algorithm, given that you have the floor(x) and log2(x) functions for arbitrarily big integers available:

You have an k-bit long integer (hence the log8(k) space) where you add the x^2, where x is the next number you find in the bag: s=1^2+2^2+... This takes O(N) time (which is not a problem for the interviewer). At the end you get j=floor(log2(s)) which is the biggest number you're looking for. Then s=s-j and you do again the above:

for (i = 0 ; i < k ; i++)
{
  j = floor(log2(s));
  missing[i] = j;
  s -= j;
}

Now, you usually don't have floor and log2 functions for 2756-bit integers but instead for doubles. So? Simply, for each 2 bytes (or 1, or 3, or 4) you can use these functions to get the desired numbers, but this adds an O(N) factor to time complexity

-1

Try to find the product of numbers from 1 to 50:

Let product, P1 = 1 x 2 x 3 x ............. 50

When you take out numbers one by one, multiply them so that you get the product P2. But two numbers are missing here, hence P2 < P1.

The product of the two mising terms, a x b = P1 - P2.

You already know the sum, a + b = S1.

From the above two equations, solve for a and b through a quadratic equation. a and b are your missing numbers.

3
  • Provably there are no quadratic equations for numbers 3 or greater. Just 2.
    – Tatarize
    Dec 17, 2015 at 14:12
  • I tried to apply the given formulae but I failed. Let's take N=3 (sequence {1,2,3}) with two missing numbers {a,b} = {1,2}. That results a×b = 6-3, a+b = 6b=6-a, a²-6a+3 = 0 ⇒ wrong.
    – dma_k
    Sep 2, 2016 at 8:44
  • 1
    axb is not P1-P2, it's P1/P2
    – Wander3r
    Feb 6, 2019 at 6:40
-1

I think this can be generalized like this:

Denote S, M as the initial values for the sum of arithmetic series and multiplication.

S = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... n=(n+1)*n/2
M = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * .... * n 

I should think about a formula to calculate this, but that is not the point. Anyway, if one number is missing, you already provided the solution. However, if two numbers are missing then, let's denote the new sum and total multiple by S1 and M1, which will be as follows:

S1 = S - (a + b)....................(1)

Where a and b are the missing numbers.

M1 = M - (a * b)....................(2)

Since you know S1, M1, M and S, the above equation is solvable to find a and b, the missing numbers.

Now for the three numbers missing:

S2 = S - ( a + b + c)....................(1)

Where a and b are the missing numbers.

M2 = M - (a * b * c)....................(2)

Now your unknown is 3 while you just have two equations you can solve from.

2
  • 1
    The multiplication gets quite large though.. Also, how do you generalize to more than 2 missing numbers? Apr 26, 2016 at 13:39
  • 1
    I have tried these formulae on very simple sequence with N = 3 and missing numbers = {1, 2}. I didn't work, as I believe the error is in formulae (2) which should read M1 = M / (a * b) (see that answer). Then it works fine.
    – dma_k
    Sep 2, 2016 at 8:37

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