LeetCode Jump Game II: Greedy vs DP vs BFS – Sigmainfy – Learn, Share, Inspire

LeetCode Jump Game II: Greedy vs DP vs BFS – Sigmainfy – Learn, Share, Inspire

Greedy algorithm could solve the LeetCode problem Jump Game II in linear time, another two alternatives are DP and BFS with more time complexit

LeetCode Jump Game II Problem

Given an array of non-negative integers, you are initially positioned at the first index of the array.

Each element in the array represents your maximum jump length at that position.

Your goal is to reach the last index in the minimum number of jumps.

For example:
Given array A = [2,3,1,1,4]

The minimum number of jumps to reach the last index is 2. (Jump 1 step from index 0 to 1, then 3 steps to the last index.)

Greedy, DP, BFS Solution Analysis

(1) DP: let F(i) denote the minimum number of jumps, then we have F(i) = min(F(j) ) + 1 where j = 0, … i – 1, this is O(N^2) approach and will get TLE by the OJ

(2) BFS: For each i in A, set the number of steps to all the reachable potions (not visited ones) as the number of steps to reach i plus 1, this is O(N * max(A[i])), and still will get TLE by the OJ

(3) Greedy: still, keep the current maximum reach distance, and the number of steps to reach this current maximum distances, and keep another variable to record the next maximum reachable distance, which cost the current steps plus 1. The key idea behind is that, all the positions before the maximum reachable distance would be able to be reached! Then we linear scan the array to keep updating the current maximum and the next maximum as well as the number of steps. We can achieve the linear time algorithm.

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