WeaponizedAutist's blog

By WeaponizedAutist, 16 months ago, In English

Hello codeforcers, today I'll try to explain an alternate solution for this problem, which is completely different from any of the solutions mentioned in the editorial.

Why am I even writing this when the contest was 6 months ago?

The solution works in $$$O((n + q)\sqrt{q} + q\log{q})$$$ time, and here is my shitty implementation with some comments.

Firstly, let us just find all the colors whose paths have the potential to be "good paths". Let's call these "potential paths". Clearly, each potential path will be a linear chain containing all the edges of its respective color. No two potential paths will share an edge (although they can share vertices). This can be easily done in $$$O(n)$$$ time.

Now, let's visualise a bipartite graph, between two sets of nodes: one set corresponding to colors (paths) and one set corresponding to vertices. An edge between color $$$c$$$ and vertex $$$v$$$ exists, if $$$v$$$ has an edge with color $$$c$$$. It's easy to show that this graph will have $$$2(n - 1)$$$ vertices at most (happens when each edge has a unique color).

If we were allowed to solve the problem in $$$O(qn)$$$ time, we could easily solve it using this graph and the following algorithm:

  1. If we want to block/unblock vertex $$$p$$$, remove/restore all of the edges of its corresponding node in the bipartite graph.
  2. The answer will be the weight of the maximum weighted potential path amongst all colors whose corresponding nodes do not have any deleted edges.

But this is obviously a dumb idea. What exactly is the problem here? The graph is too damn big, there are too many nodes and edges. So how do we remedy this? Well, obviously by making the graph smaller if possible.

Now, let's make an observation about how the bipartite graph is affected if we consider only a subset of all the vertices.

Observation: If we consider a set of $$$k$$$ vertices, there will be no more than $$$2(k - 1)$$$ "potential paths" which are touched by more than one vertex in this set.

Why is this true? Well, simply because the auxiliary tree of $$$k$$$ vertices has at most $$$2(k - 1)$$$ edges. Existence of more potential paths which are touched by more than one vertex from this set would imply that the auxiliary tree is incomplete which would be a contradiction.

Now, let us divide the queries into blocks of $$$\sqrt{q}$$$ size. We will be processing these blocks in order and answering queries.

At each block $$$B$$$, we will do the following:

Let $$$S$$$ be the set of nodes which will be toggled in $$$B$$$. Now, we can categorise all the "potential paths" into 3 types:

  1. Type 1: Not touched by any node in $$$S$$$.
  2. Type 2: Touched by exactly one node in $$$S$$$.
  3. Type 3: Touched by $$$>1$$$ nodes in $$$S$$$.

This segregation can be done easily in $$$O(n)$$$ time.

There can be $$$O(n)$$$ type 1 and type 2 paths, but only $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ type 3 paths because of the observation we made above.

Let us see how we deal with each type:

  1. Type 1: The validity of type 1 paths will not change throughout this block. So at the start of this block, we can easily compute in $$$O(n)$$$ time, that which of these paths are good. Let $$$mx$$$ be the weight of the maximum weight path among all the good type-1 potential paths.
  2. Type 2: Even though there may be $$$O(n)$$$ such paths, we only really care about $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ of them. For each node $$$u$$$ in $$$S$$$, we only care about the maximum weight type-2 path that it touches, and the path has all its other nodes unblocked (so that, if $$$u$$$ is unblocked, this path becomes good). Throughout this block, we will now maintain a set which will contain weight of such path for each node in $$$S$$$ which is unblocked. Whenever we want to block/unblock some node, we can simply insert/erase its corresponding type-2 path's weight into the set.
  3. Type 3: There are only $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ such paths, so we will simply use the slow solution I described above (just brute force updates and queries in the bipartite graph). Just construct the bipartite graph, it will have $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ nodes and $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ edges. Updates and queries both, will take $$$O(\sqrt{q})$$$ time.

So the answer for each query will simply be the maximum of the values we get from all the 3 types of paths, and time taken for each query will be $$$O(1 + \log{q} + \sqrt{q})$$$ (lol the holy trifecta).

Question to authors

Anyways, I hope there aren't any typos. I wrote this blog after eating 4 sizeable chocolates so I feel a bit disoriented. Good night. Harambe forever.

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16 months ago, # |
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It's great to see this kind of really useful blogs in the recent actions.

Thank you !