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    N Celebrity Algorithm

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    Kundai Mujati
    This document describes an algorithm to find the celebrity (stranger known by all) at a party in minimum number of questions. It uses a Boolean matrix to represent who knows who. It makes two observations - if A knows B, A can't be celebrity, and if A doesn't know B, B can't be celebrity. It uses a stack to push and pop potential celebrity candidates, discarding ones that fail the observations. It ends by verifying the final candidate C is known by all and doesn't know anyone to identify the true celebrity in O(N) time complexity.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    N Celebrity Algorithm

    Uploaded by

    Kundai Mujati
    62 views4 pages
    This document describes an algorithm to find the celebrity (stranger known by all) at a party in minimum number of questions. It uses a Boolean matrix to represent who knows who. It makes two observations - if A knows B, A can't be celebrity, and if A doesn't know B, B can't be celebrity. It uses a stack to push and pop potential celebrity candidates, discarding ones that fail the observations. It ends by verifying the final candidate C is known by all and doesn't know anyone to identify the true celebrity in O(N) time complexity.

    Original Description:

    Design of Algorithms, N celebrity

    Original Title

    n Celebrity Algorithm

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    This document describes an algorithm to find the celebrity (stranger known by all) at a party in minimum number of questions. It uses a Boolean matrix to represent who knows who. It makes two observations - if A knows B, A can't be celebrity, and if A doesn't know B, B can't be celebrity. It uses a stack to push and pop potential celebrity candidates, discarding ones that fail the observations. It ends by verifying the final candidate C is known by all and doesn't know anyone to identify the true celebrity in O(N) time complexity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    62 views4 pages

    N Celebrity Algorithm

    Uploaded by

    Kundai Mujati
    This document describes an algorithm to find the celebrity (stranger known by all) at a party in minimum number of questions. It uses a Boolean matrix to represent who knows who. It makes two observations - if A knows B, A can't be celebrity, and if A doesn't know B, B can't be celebrity. It uses a stack to push and pop potential celebrity candidates, discarding ones that fail the observations. It ends by verifying the final candidate C is known by all and doesn't know anyone to identify the true celebrity in O(N) time complexity.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Celebrity Algorithm

    In a party of N people, only one person is known to everyone. Such a person may be present in the
    party, if yes, (s)he doesn’t know anyone in the party.

    We can only ask questions like “does A know B?”

    Find the stranger (celebrity) in minimum number of questions.

    Suppose there are 4 people (A, B, C, D) in a party you will be given a Boolean matrix:

    Here “1” means that a person in row knows a person in the column. Like A knows C in the first row.

    For simplicity in the algorithm we have assumed that a person does not know himself.

    By looking at the matrix you can say that “c” is the celebrity.

    As “C” does not know anyone but everyone knows “C”.

    A naïve solution could be that we scan all the elements of this matrix and search for a row which
    contains all “zeros”.

    Time complexity will be O(N^2).

    The following observations can be made in this problem

     If A knows B, then A can’t be celebrity. Discard A and B may be celebrity.


     I A doesn’t know B, then B can’t be celebrity. Discard B, and A may be celebrity.

    We can use these to reduce our comparisons.

    We can use stack to verify celebrity.


    Push all the celebrities into a stack.

    Pop off top two from the stack, discard one person based on return status of knows(A, B).

    knows(A, B) = false

    (ii) discard B and push A back into stack.

    Pop A and C

    Knows(A, C) = True

    (iii) Discard A and push C back to stack

    Pop C and D

    Knows(C, D) = false

    (iv) Discard D and push C back to stack


    Now, just check if “C” is actually the celebrity or not by if everyone knows “C” and C does not know
    anyone.

    Time complexity O(N)

    int findCelebrity (int n)

    stack<int> s;

    int C; //celebrity

    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)

    s.push(i);

    int A = s.top( ); //extract top 2

    s.pop( );

    int B = s.top( );

    s.pop( );

    while (s.size( ) > 1) //find a potential celebrity

    If (knows(A, B))

    A = s.top( );

    s.pop( );

    Else

    B = s.top( );

    s.pop( );

    C = s.top( );
    s.pop( );

    if (knows(C, B))

    C = B;

    If (knows (C, A))

    C = A;

    For (int i = 0; i < n; i++) //check if C is actually a celebrity or not

    If ( (I != C) &&

    (knows(C, i) || !knows(i, C)) )

    Return -1;

    Return C;

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