Yesterday I woke up bright and early. I poured a strong cup of joe and set off to http://www.codewars.com to train with a new code Kata. I was feeling confident after solving one the day before so I thought why not up the ante a bit and try a 5 kyu challenge called “Weight for weight.” In the end, I got a wallop of a black eye. Fortunately though, we all do our best learning from struggle.
I hacked away at it for hours I must admit and I almost solved it, but in the end I caved under the weight of it all (pun intended). Let’s see the instructions for the challenge and then I’ll show you my ham-handed attempt at solving it. After that I’ll show a solution I found on github and how I went about analyzing it with the chrome debugger.
Weight for weight 5 kyu challenge
Instructions:
My friend John and I are members of the “Fat to Fit Club (FFC)”. John is worried because each month a list with the weights of members is published and each month he is the last on the list which means he is the heaviest.
I am the one who establishes the list so I told him: “Don’t worry any more, I will modify the order of the list”. It was decided to attribute a “weight” to numbers. The weight of a number will be from now on the sum of its digits.
For example 99 will have “weight” 18, 100 will have “weight” 1 so in the list 100 will come before 99. Given a string with the weights of FFC members in normal order can you give this string ordered by “weights” of these numbers?
Example:
“56 65 74 100 99 68 86 180 90” ordered by numbers weights becomes: “100 180 90 56 65 74 68 86 99”
When two numbers have the same “weight”, let us class them as if they were strings and not numbers: 100 is before 180 because its “weight” (1) is less than the one of 180 (9) and 180 is before 90 since, having the same “weight” (9) it comes before as a string.
All numbers in the list are positive numbers and the list can be empty.
Here is my almost-working solution. My solution is not very well composed and doesn’t even address the last bit of instruction listed below:
function orderWeight(strng) {
var strArr = strng.split(' ');
var newArr = [];
var sum = 0;
var numToAdd = 0;
var obj = {};
var orderedArr = [];
function convertToObj(strArr, obj) {
strArr.forEach(function(str, index) {
for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
numToAdd = parseInt(str.charAt(i), 10);
sum += numToAdd;
}
obj[str] = sum;
console.log(obj[str]);
});
return obj;
}
convertToObj(strArr, obj);
console.log(obj);
for (var prop in obj) {
console.log(prop.toString());
newArr.push([prop, obj[prop]]);
}
newArr = newArr.sort(function(a, b) {
return a[1] + b[1];
});
for (var j = 0; j < newArr.length; j++) {
orderedArr.push(newArr[j][0]);
}
var finalStr = orderedArr.join(" ");
console.log(finalStr);
}
When two numbers have the same “weight”, let us class them as if they were strings and not numbers: 100 is before 180 because its “weight” (1) is less than the one of 180 (9) and 180 is before 90 since, having the same “weight” (9) it comes before as a string.
My output: 180 100 99 90 86 74 68 65 56
correct output: "100 180 90 56 65 74 68 86 99"
I ended up chasing my own tail like a hyper little dog. You don’t need to concentrate at all on my non-solution, I just want to show you for illustrative purposes. My thinking was to make a simple hash with the prop being the actual number and the prop value being the sum of counting each individual place, so if the num was 235 then the resulting hash would be:
2 + 3 + 5 = 10 {235:10}
The problem with using that method was trying to figure out how to then output the prop name which was the real number in the order I wanted, while also ordering the numbers based on string sort. The evidence of my tail chasing is above. This is not to say I didn’t learn anything. I learned quite a lot about how to manipulate objects from this challenge. At the end of this post I’ll share all the research from my head scratching.
Now let’s see an elegant solution. I ran it through the debugger to understand how it works. Credit goes to http://www.paigebolduc.com/ for the featured solution.
function orderWeightV2(strng) {
var weights = strng.split(' '); // splits string into an array based on
spaces
// divide and conquer
// sort takes 2 array index's at a time (a, b) and allows you to do a
comparison between each pair
weights.sort(function(a, b) {
var aSum = getSum(a); // call getSum() ie: value 246 = 2 + 4 + 6 = 12
var bSum = getSum(b); // call it again with b
if (aSum === bSum) { // compare based on sum only
if (a < b) {
return -1; // -1 means sort a before b
} else {
return 1; // 1 means sort b before a
}
} else if (aSum < bSum) { if a is less that b keep it same
return -1;
}
return 1; // otherwise b before a
});
return weights.join(" ");
}
// called above inside sort
function getSum(str) {
return str.split('').reduce(function(sum, next) {
return sum + Number(next);
}, 0);
}
// the above function uses reduce but could also be written like below
function getTotal(str) {
str = str.split('');
var sum = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
sum += parseInt(str[i]);
}
return sum;
}
I opened the console by hitting Ctrl+Shift J, then moved over to the sources tab and stepped through the solution by hitting F11 (you can see with the featured animation at the top of the post).
My problem was not fully understanding the MDN explanations of sort method. I found this article called, “Sophisticated Sorting” which made more sense. It goes into much more versatile ways of using sort().
So I failed the challenge, but in the struggle I learned more about objects and the sort method. I feel like I was able to turn it into a win and that is what practicing algorithms is about. I’ve heard quite a few complaints from Free Code Campers that the algorithms are too hard. They aren’t too hard and your supposed to fall on your face before being able to solve them.
Do not think of them as goals to get past. Approach them as an opportunity to explore new concepts. As with many things in life it’s about the journey and not the end goal sometimes. Of course you want to solve them in the end, but never at the expense of the struggle of finding the solution.
Beyond everything else, remember that you’re not the stupid one. It’s the computer that is dumb as a rock. You just need to learn to give the computer more explicit instructions. 😀
research links from trying to solve this challenge:
Shovels Of Code 