Description
Background
Space is very limited in NUS and assigning lectures to lecture halls efficiently is a pertinent problem. Due to the busy schedules of the lecturers, most of them can only give the lectures at a fixed
time slot in the week.
Since there is a limited number of lecture halls, the lectures should be assigned such that the halls
are well utilised. Hence, given all the lecture timings, you want to know what is the minimum
number of lecture halls needed so that all the lectures can take place at their time slot.
However, there may not be enough lecture halls in the school to fit all the lectures, so you also
want to know for a given fixed number of lecture halls, what is the minimum number of lectures
that need to be cancelled so that all the lectures can take place at their time slot.
Details
There are a total of N lectures that need to be conducted labelled 0 to N − 1 and each lecture
must be given at a fixed time slot but there are only L lecture halls. For convenience, the time slot
for lecture i starts at starti
time units and ends at endi
time units where starti < endi
. Another
lecture can start right after a lecture ends in the same lecture hall which means if one lecture ends
at 5 time units and another lecture starts at 5 time units, both can use the same lecture hall.
Given these limitations, you need to calculate 2 values.
1. If you don’t want to cancel any lectures, what is the minimum number of lecture halls that
need to be booked such that all the lectures can be scheduled in a way where no 2 lectures
are in the same lecture hall at the same time.
2. If there are only L lecture halls, what is the minimum number of lectures that need to be
cancelled so that all the lectures can take place at their time slot using only L lecture halls.
CS3230 Programming Assignment 2 2
Implementation
You need to implement 2 functions to calculate the 2 values described above. The functions will
take in 4 parameters:
• N – The number of lectures
• L – The number of lecture halls
• start – A list of N integers integers where start[i] is starti as described above
• end – A list of N integers where end[i] is endi as described above
You are allowed to submit in either Java or C++11. Templates for both languages have been
provided in the IVLE Workbin in the same folder as this task statement. The templates have implemented the I/O routines for you so you are strongly encouraged to use them. In addition, you
are allowed to add other functions into your program to modularise your code but you must submit
only ONE source file.
For testing purposes, the program will read in the parameters listed above from standard input
in the exact order listed above for each test case with each parameter on a separate line. There
can be multiple test cases within one run and the first integer gives the number of test cases. The
program will output one line for each test case, which contains one integer that is the answer for
that test case.
For example, if there are 5 lectures and 2 lecture halls where start = [3, 5, 4, 2, 1] and end =
[4, 6, 7, 5, 5] then the input it expects will look like this:
1
5
2
3 5 4 2 1
4 6 7 5 5
Example
For the example given above, if no lectures can be cancelled then the minimum number of lecture
halls required is 3. The first lecture hall would host lectures 4 and 1 in that order while the second
lecture hall would host lectures 0 and 2 in that order and the third lecture hall would host lecture
3. The scheduling will look like the following diagram:
CS3230 Programming Assignment 2 3
However, since area is only 2 lecture halls, the minimum number of lectures that need to be cancelled is 1. Specifically, cancelling lecture 3 will allow all the remaining lectures to fit into 2 lecture
halls.
Submission
The assignment is split into multiple parts with a separate score for each part. You are encouraged
to work on all the parts in order since it will help you design your algorithm step by step.
You will submit your solutions on http://algorithmics.comp.nus.edu.sg/˜mooshak/
using the same username and password as PA1. You are NOT allowed to share accounts and you
must submit your own code. Your codes will be checked for plagiarism and any instances of plagiarism found will be subject to disciplinary action.
To submit your solutions, select the contest ”CS3230 PA2” and login. You will see parts A, B,
C and D which represent the parts described below. Submit your solution and it will be run against
a set of 10 test cases. Your code must solve all test cases correctly and within 1 second for parts A,
B and C and within 2 seconds for part D in order to get the credit for that part. You will see the
result of your submission immediately after submitting and you can submit as many times as you
want before the deadline without any penalty for wrong answers.
In addition, sample test cases for each part has been provided for you on the IVLE Workbin
to do your own testing. However, do note that these test cases are different from the ones on
the online judge so solving those test cases correctly does not ensure that you will solve those
on the judge correctly.
CS3230 Programming Assignment 2 4
Scoring
Part A (2%)
In the first part, you are required to simply design any algorithm that solves the problem to show
that you understand the problem. The test cases for this part will satisfy the following restrictions:
• 1 ≤ L ≤ N ≤ 5
• 1 ≤ starti < endi ≤ 10 for all i
Part B (2%)
In the second part, you are required to design a Greedy algorithm to calculate the first value and it
should run in time complexity O(N × max(endi)). In this part, L = N for all test cases so there
will always be enough lecture halls and thus no lectures have to be cancelled. The test cases for
this part will satisfy the following restrictions:
• 1 ≤ L = N ≤ 500
• 1 ≤ starti < endi ≤ 1000 for all i
Part C (2%)
In the third part, you are required to design a Greedy algorithm to calculate the second value and it
should run in time complexity O(NL). You should add this algorithm on top of your solution for
Part B to get the full credit. The test cases for this part will satisfy the following restrictions:
• 1 ≤ L ≤ N ≤ 500
• 1 ≤ starti < endi ≤ 1000 for all i
Part D (2%)
In the fourth part, you are required to optimise your algorithms from Parts B and C so that it runs
with time complexity O(N log N). (Hint: You may need to make use of other non-linear data
structures). The test cases for this part will satisfy the following restrictions:
• 1 ≤ L ≤ N ≤ 30000
• 1 ≤ starti < endi ≤ 1000000000 for all i
Deadline
The deadline for submission for this assignment is 12th Nov 2018 2359h so please start working
on it early. The portal will automatically close at this time and no further submissions will be
accepted.
