How would you look at developing an algorithm for this hotel problem?

Question

There is a problem I am working on for a programming course and I am having trouble developing an algorithm to suit the problem. Here it is:

You are going on a long trip. You start on the road at mile post 0. Along the way there are n hotels, at mile posts a1 < a2 < ... < an, where each ai is measured from the starting point. The only places you are allowed to stop are at these hotels, but you can choose which of the hotels you stop at. You must stop at the final hotel (at distance an), which is your destination. You'd ideally like to travel 200 miles a day, but this may not be possible (depending on the spacing of the hotels). If you travel x miles during a day, the penalty for that day is (200 - x)^2. You want to plan your trip so as to minimize the total penalty that is, the sum, over all travel days, of the daily penalties. Give an efficient algorithm that determines the optimal sequence of hotels at which to stop.

So, my intuition tells me to start from the back, checking penalty values, then somehow match them going back the forward direction (resulting in an O(n^2) runtime, which is optimal enough for the situation).

Anyone see any possible way to make this idea work out or have any ideas on possible implmentations?

Answer 1

If x is a marker number, ax is the mileage to that marker, and px is the minimum penalty to get to that marker, you can calculate pn for marker n if you know pm for all markers m before n.

To calculate pn, find the minimum of pm + (200 - (an - am))^2 for all markers m where am < an and (200 - (an - am))^2 is less than your current best for pn (last part is optimization).

For the starting marker 0, a0 = 0 and p0 = 0, for marker 1, p1 = (200 - a1)^2. With that starting information you can calculate p2, then p3 etc. up to pn.

edit: Switched to Java code, using the example from OP's comment. Note that this does not have the optimization check described in second paragraph.

public static void printPath(int path[], int i) {
    if (i == 0) return;
    printPath(path, path[i]);
    System.out.print(i + " ");
}

public static void main(String args[]) {
    int hotelList[] = {0, 200, 400, 600, 601};
    int penalties[] = {0, (int)Math.pow(200 - hotelList[1], 2), -1, -1, -1};
    int path[] = {0, 0, -1, -1, -1};
    for (int i = 2; i <= hotelList.length - 1; i++) {
        for(int j = 0; j < i; j++){
            int tempPen = (int)(penalties[j] + Math.pow(200 - (hotelList[i] - hotelList[j]), 2));
            if(penalties[i] == -1 || tempPen < penalties[i]){
                penalties[i] = tempPen;
                path[i] = j;
            }
        }
    }
    for (int i = 1; i < hotelList.length; i++) {
        System.out.print("Hotel: " + hotelList[i] + ", penalty: " + penalties[i] + ", path: ");
        printPath(path, i);
        System.out.println();
    }
}

Output is:

Hotel: 200, penalty: 0, path: 1 
Hotel: 400, penalty: 0, path: 1 2 
Hotel: 600, penalty: 0, path: 1 2 3 
Hotel: 601, penalty: 1, path: 1 2 4