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Reducing a BigInteger value in C#

I'm somewhat new to working with BigIntegers and have tried some stuff to get this system working, but feel a little stuck at the moment and would really appreciate a nudge in the right direction or a solution.
I'm currently working on a system which reduces BigInteger values down to a more readable form, and this is working fine with my current implementation, but I would like to further expand on it to get decimals implemented.
To better give a picture of what I'm attempting, I'll break it down.
In this context, we have a method which is taking a BigInteger, and returning it as a string:
public static string ShortenBigInt (BigInteger moneyValue)
With this in mind, when a number such as 10,000 is passed to this method, 10k will be returned. Same for 1,000,000 which will return 1M.
This is done by doing:
for(int i = 0; i < prefixes.Length; i++)
{
if(!(moneyValue >= BigInteger.Pow(10, 3*i)))
{
moneyValue = moneyValue / BigInteger.Pow(10, 3*(i-1));
return moneyValue + prefixes[i-1];
}
}
This system is working by grabbing a string from an array of prefixes and reducing numbers down to their simplest forms and combining the two and returning it when inside that prefix range.
So with that context, the question I have is:
How might I go about returning this in the same way, where passing 100,000 would return 100k, but also doing something like 1,111,111 would return 1.11M?
Currently, passing 1,111,111M returns 1M, but I would like that additional .11 tagged on. No more than 2 decimals.
My original thought was to convert the big integer into a string, then chunk out the first few characters into a new string and parse a decimal in there, but since prefixes don't change until values reach their 1000th mark, it's harder to tell when to place the decimal place.
My next thought was using BigInteger.Log to reduce the value down into a decimal friendly number and do a simple division to get the value in its decimal form, but doing this didn't seem to work with my implementation.
This system should work for the following prefixes, dynamically:
k, M, B, T, qd, Qn, sx, Sp,
O, N, de, Ud, DD, tdD, qdD, QnD,
sxD, SpD, OcD, NvD, Vgn, UVg, DVg,
TVg, qtV, QnV, SeV, SPG, OVG, NVG,
TGN, UTG, DTG, tsTG, qtTG, QnTG, ssTG,
SpTG, OcTG, NoTG, QdDR, uQDR, dQDR, tQDR,
qdQDR, QnQDR, sxQDR, SpQDR, OQDDr, NQDDr,
qQGNT, uQGNT, dQGNT, tQGNT, qdQGNT, QnQGNT,
sxQGNT, SpQGNT, OQQGNT, NQQGNT, SXGNTL
Would anyone happen to know how to do something like this? Any language is fine, C# is preferable, but I'm all good with translating. Thank you in advance!

formatting it manually could work a bit like this:
(prefixes as a string which is an char[])
public static string ShortenBigInt(BigInteger moneyValue)
{
string prefixes = " kMGTP";
double m2 = (double)moneyValue;
for (int i = 1; i < prefixes.Length; i++)
{
var step = Math.Pow(10, 3 * i);
if (m2 / step < 1000)
{
return String.Format("{0:F2}", (m2/step)) + prefixes[i];
}
}
return "err";
}

Although Falco's answer does work, it doesn't work for what was requested. This was the solution I was looking for and received some help from a friend on it. This solution will go until there are no more prefixes left in your string array of prefixes. If you do run out of bounds, the exception will be thrown and handled by returning "Infinity".
This solution is better due to the fact there is no crunch down to doubles/decimals within this process. This solution does not have a number cap, only limit is the amount of prefixes you make/provide.
public static string ShortenBigInt(BigInteger moneyValue)
{
if (moneyValue < 1000)
return "" + moneyValue;
try
{
string moneyAsString = moneyValue.ToString();
string prefix = prefixes[(moneyAsString.Length - 1) / 3];
BigInteger chopAmmount = (moneyAsString.Length - 1) % 3 + 1;
int insertPoint = (int)chopAmmount;
chopAmmount += 2;
moneyAsString = moneyAsString.Remove(Math.Min(moneyAsString.Length - 1, (int)chopAmmount));
moneyAsString = moneyAsString.Insert(insertPoint, ".");
return moneyAsString + " " + prefix;
}
catch (Exception exceptionToBeThrown)
{
return "Infinity";
}
}

Better way to do this code. Convert from string, Math.Round and handle negative numbers

I have an exercise where i have to convert string to whole number and be able to handle negative numbers. This kind of works but there has to be a better way to do this.
String nr = "-5.6";
double x = Convert.ToDouble(nr); //Convert to double
double y = Math.Round(x); //Round the nr
int r = Convert.ToInt32(x); //Convert to Int
string t = r.ToString(); //Convert back to string so possible
textBox1.AppendText(t); //to Append to textBox

You could go hero mode, and just do it in one line, depending on what you want the results to be
var nr = "-5.6";
var result = Math.Truncate(double.Parse(nr)).ToString() ; // -5
// or
var result = Math.Round(double.Parse(nr)).ToString() ; // -6
Though putting everything on one line as a hack, also if this is user input, you would probably want to use double.TryParse and validate against dirty little fingers

Your way is fine; it is explicit and allows you complete control over each step of the conversion. It would be easy to modify it to change the rounding rules, for example, or to handle different number formats.
However if you want something very simple and short, you can do it in one line by using string.Format.
var result = string.Format("{0:N0}", float.Parse("-5.6"));

How can I implement the Viterbi algorithm in C# to split conjoined words?

In short - I want to convert the first answer to the question here from Python into C#. My current solution to splitting conjoined words is exponential, and I would like a linear solution. I am assuming no spacing and consistent casing in my input text.
Background
I wish to convert conjoined strings such as "wickedweather" into separate words, for example "wicked weather" using C#. I have created a working solution, a recursive function using exponential time, which is simply not efficient enough for my purposes (processing at least over 100 joined words). Here the questions I have read so far, which I believe may be helpful, but I cannot translate their responses from Python to C#.
How can I split multiple joined words?
Need help understanding this Python Viterbi algorithm
How to extract literal words from a consecutive string efficiently?
My Current Recursive Solution
This is for people who only want to split a few words (< 50) in C# and don't really care about efficiency.
My current solution works out all possible combinations of words, finds the most probable output and displays. I am currently defining the most probable output as the one which uses the longest individual words - I would prefer to use a different method. Here is my current solution, using a recursive algorithm.
static public string find_words(string instring)
{
if (words.Contains(instring)) //where words is my dictionary of words
{
return instring;
}
if (solutions.ContainsKey(instring.ToString()))
{
return solutions[instring];
}
string bestSolution = "";
string solution = "";
for (int i = 1; i < instring.Length; i++)
{
string partOne = find_words(instring.Substring(0, i));
string partTwo = find_words(instring.Substring(i, instring.Length - i));
if (partOne == "" || partTwo == "")
{
continue;
}
solution = partOne + " " + partTwo;
//if my current solution is smaller than my best solution so far (smaller solution means I have used the space to separate words fewer times, meaning the words are larger)
if (bestSolution == "" || solution.Length < bestSolution.Length)
{
bestSolution = solution;
}
}
solutions[instring] = bestSolution;
return bestSolution;
}
This algorithm relies on having no spacing or other symbols in the entry text (not really a problem here, I'm not fussed about splitting up punctuation). Random additional letters added within the string can cause an error, unless I store each letter of the alphabet as a "word" within my dictionary. This means that "wickedweatherdykjs" would return "wicked weather d y k j s" using the above algorithm, when I would prefer an output of "wicked weather dykjs".
My updated exponential solution:
static List<string> words = File.ReadLines("E:\\words.txt").ToList();
static Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>> compiledWords = buildDictionary(words);
private void btnAutoSpacing_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string text = txtText.Text;
text = RemoveSpacingandNewLines(text); //get rid of anything that breaks the algorithm
if (text.Length > 150)
{
//possibly split the text up into more manageable chunks?
//considering using textSplit() for this.
}
else
{
txtText.Text = find_words(text);
}
}
static IEnumerable<string> textSplit(string str, int chunkSize)
{
return Enumerable.Range(0, str.Length / chunkSize)
.Select(i => str.Substring(i * chunkSize, chunkSize));
}
private static Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>> buildDictionary(IEnumerable<string> words)
{
var dictionary = new Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>>();
foreach (var word in words)
{
var key = word[0];
if (!dictionary.ContainsKey(key))
{
dictionary[key] = new HashSet<string>();
}
dictionary[key].Add(word);
}
return dictionary;
}
static public string find_words(string instring)
{
string bestSolution = "";
string solution = "";
if (compiledWords[instring[0]].Contains(instring))
{
return instring;
}
if (solutions.ContainsKey(instring.ToString()))
{
return solutions[instring];
}
for (int i = 1; i < instring.Length; i++)
{
string partOne = find_words(instring.Substring(0, i));
string partTwo = find_words(instring.Substring(i, instring.Length - i));
if (partOne == "" || partTwo == "")
{
continue;
}
solution = partOne + " " + partTwo;
if (bestSolution == "" || solution.Length < bestSolution.Length)
{
bestSolution = solution;
}
}
solutions[instring] = bestSolution;
return bestSolution;
}
How I would like to use the Viterbi Algorithm
I would like to create an algorithm which works out the most probable solution to a conjoined string, where the probability is calculated according to the position of the word in a text file that I provide the algorithm with. Let's say the file starts with the most common word in the English language first, and on the next line the second most common, and so on until the least common word in my dictionary. It looks roughly like this
the
be
and
...
attorney
Here is a link to a small example of such a text file I would like to use.
Here is a much larger text file which I would like to use
The logic behind this file positioning is as follows...
It is reasonable to assume that they follow Zipf's law, that is the
word with rank n in the list of words has probability roughly 1/(n log
N) where N is the number of words in the dictionary.
Generic Human, in his excellent Python solution, explains this much better than I can. I would like to convert his solution to the problem from Python into C#, but after many hours spent attempting this I haven't been able to produce a working solution.
I also remain open to the idea that perhaps relative frequencies with the Viterbi algorithm isn't the best way to split words, any other suggestions for creating a solution using C#?

Written text is highly contextual and you may wish to use a Markov chain to model sentence structure in order to estimate joint probability. Unfortunately, sentence structure breaks the Viterbi assumption -- but there is still hope, the Viterbi algorithm is a case of branch-and-bound optimization aka "pruned dynamic programming" (something I showed in my thesis) and therefore even when the cost-splicing assumption isn't met, you can still develop cost bounds and prune your population of candidate solutions. But let's set Markov chains aside for now... assuming that the probabilities are independent and each follows Zipf's law, what you need to know is that the Viterbi algorithm works on accumulating additive costs.
For independent events, joint probability is the product of the individual probabilities, making negative log-probability a good choice for the cost.
So your single-step cost would be -log(P) or log(1/P) which is log(index * log(N)) which is log(index) + log(log(N)) and the latter term is a constant.

Can't help you with the Viterbi Algorithm but I'll give my two cents concerning your current approach. From your code its not exactly clear what words is. This can be a real bottleneck if you don't choose a good data structure. As a gut feeling I'd initially go with a Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>> where the key is the first letter of each word:
private static Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>> buildDictionary(IEnumerable<string> words)
{
var dictionary = new Dictionary<char, HashSet<string>>();
foreach (var word in words)
{
var key = word[0];
if (!dictionary.ContainsKey(key))
{
dictionary[key] = new HashSet<string>();
}
dictionary[key].Add(word);
}
return dictionary;
}
And I'd also consider serializing it to disk to avoid building it up every time.
Not sure how much improvement you can make like this (dont have full information of you current implementation) but benchmark it and see if you get any improvement.
NOTE: I'm assuming all words are cased consistently.

C# getting first digit of int in custom class

I am trying to build a help function in my guess the number game, whereby the user gets the first digit of the number he/she has to guess. So if the generated number is 550, he will get the 5.
I have tried a lot of things, maybe one of you has an idea what is wrong?
public partial class Class3
{
public Class3()
{
double test = Convert.ToDouble(globalVariableNumber.number);
while (test > 10)
{
double firstDigit = test / 10;
test = Math.Round(test);
globalVariableNumber.helpMe = Convert.ToString(firstDigit);
}
}
}
Under the helpButton clicked I have:
private void helpButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
label3.Text = globalVariableNumber.helpMe;
label3.AutoSize = true;
That is my latest try, I putted all of this in a custom class. In the main I putted the code to show what is in the helpMe string.
If you need more code please tell me

Why not ToString the number and use Substring to get the first character?
var number = 550;
var result = number.ToString().Substring(0, 1);
If for some reason you dont want to use string manipulation you could do this mathematically like this
var number = 550;
var result = Math.Floor(number / Math.Pow(10, Math.Floor(Math.Log10(number))));

What's wrong - you have an infinite while loop there. Math.Round(test) will leave the value of test unchanged after the first iteration.
You may have intended to use firstDigit as the variable controlling the loop.
Anyway, as suggested by others, you can set helpMe to the first digit by converting to a string and using the first character.
As an aside, you should consider supplying the number as a parameter and returning the helpMe string from the method. Your current approach is a little brittle.

The problem with your code is that you are doing the division and storing that in a separate variable, then you round the original value. That means that the original value only changes in the first iteration of the loop (and is only rounded, not divided), and unless that happens to make the loop condition false (i.e. for values between 10 and 10.5), the loop will never end.
Changes:
Use an int intead of a double, that gets you away from a whole bunch of potential precision problems.
Use the >= operator rather than >. If you get the value 10 then you want the loop to go on for another iteration to get a single digit.
You would use Math.Floor instead of Math.Round as you don't want the first digit to be rounded up, i.e. getting the first digit for 460 as 5. However, if you are using an integer then the division truncates the result, so there is no need to do any rounding at all.
Divide the value and store it back into the same variable.
Use the value after the loop, there is no point in updating it while you still have multiple digits in the variable.
Code:
int test = (int)globalVariableNumber.number;
while (test >= 10) {
test = test / 10;
}
globalVariableNumber.helpMe = test.ToString();

By using Math.Round(), in your example, you're rounding 5.5 to 6 (it's the even integer per the documentation). Use Math.Floor instead, this will drop the decimal point but give you the number you're expecting for this test.
i.e.
double test = Convert.ToDouble(globalVariableNumber.number);
while (test > 10)
{
test = Math.Floor(test / 10);
globalVariableNumber.helpMe = Convert.ToString(firstDigit);
}
Like #Sam Greenhalgh mentions, though, returning the first character of the number as a string will be cleaner, quicker and easier.
globalVariableNumber.helpMe = test >= 10
? test.ToString().SubString(0, 1)
: "Hint not possible, number is less than ten"
This assumes that helpMe is a string.
Per our discussion in the comments, you'd be better off doing it like this:
private void helpButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
label3.Text = GetHelpText();
label3.AutoSize = true;
}
// Always good practice to name a method that returns something Get...
// Also good practice to give it a descriptive name.
private string GetHelpText()
{
return test >= 10 // The ?: operator just means if the first part is true...
? test.ToString().SubString(0, 1) // use this, otherwise...
: "Hint not possible, number is less than ten" // use this.
}

Standard deviation of generic list? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How do I determine the standard deviation (stddev) of a set of values?
(12 answers)
Standard Deviation in LINQ
(8 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I need to calculate the standard deviation of a generic list. I will try to include my code. Its a generic list with data in it. The data is mostly floats and ints. Here is my code that is relative to it without getting into to much detail:
namespace ValveTesterInterface
{
public class ValveDataResults
{
private List<ValveData> m_ValveResults;
public ValveDataResults()
{
if (m_ValveResults == null)
{
m_ValveResults = new List<ValveData>();
}
}
public void AddValveData(ValveData valve)
{
m_ValveResults.Add(valve);
}
Here is the function where the standard deviation needs to be calculated:
public float LatchStdev()
{
float sumOfSqrs = 0;
float meanValue = 0;
foreach (ValveData value in m_ValveResults)
{
meanValue += value.LatchTime;
}
meanValue = (meanValue / m_ValveResults.Count) * 0.02f;
for (int i = 0; i <= m_ValveResults.Count; i++)
{
sumOfSqrs += Math.Pow((m_ValveResults - meanValue), 2);
}
return Math.Sqrt(sumOfSqrs /(m_ValveResults.Count - 1));
}
}
}
Ignore whats inside the LatchStdev() function because I'm sure its not right. Its just my poor attempt to calculate the st dev. I know how to do it of a list of doubles, however not of a list of generic data list. If someone had experience in this, please help.

The example above is slightly incorrect and could have a divide by zero error if your population set is 1. The following code is somewhat simpler and gives the "population standard deviation" result. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation)
using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Collections.Generic;
public static class Extend
{
public static double StandardDeviation(this IEnumerable<double> values)
{
double avg = values.Average();
return Math.Sqrt(values.Average(v=>Math.Pow(v-avg,2)));
}
}

This article should help you. It creates a function that computes the deviation of a sequence of double values. All you have to do is supply a sequence of appropriate data elements.
The resulting function is:
private double CalculateStandardDeviation(IEnumerable<double> values)
{
double standardDeviation = 0;
if (values.Any())
{
// Compute the average.
double avg = values.Average();
// Perform the Sum of (value-avg)_2_2.
double sum = values.Sum(d => Math.Pow(d - avg, 2));
// Put it all together.
standardDeviation = Math.Sqrt((sum) / (values.Count()-1));
}
return standardDeviation;
}
This is easy enough to adapt for any generic type, so long as we provide a selector for the value being computed. LINQ is great for that, the Select funciton allows you to project from your generic list of custom types a sequence of numeric values for which to compute the standard deviation:
List<ValveData> list = ...
var result = list.Select( v => (double)v.SomeField )
.CalculateStdDev();

Even though the accepted answer seems mathematically correct, it is wrong from the programming perspective - it enumerates the same sequence 4 times. This might be ok if the underlying object is a list or an array, but if the input is a filtered/aggregated/etc linq expression, or if the data is coming directly from the database or network stream, this would cause much lower performance.
I would highly recommend not to reinvent the wheel and use one of the better open source math libraries Math.NET. We have been using that lib in our company and are very happy with the performance.
PM> Install-Package MathNet.Numerics
var populationStdDev = new List<double>(1d, 2d, 3d, 4d, 5d).PopulationStandardDeviation();
var sampleStdDev = new List<double>(2d, 3d, 4d).StandardDeviation();
See http://numerics.mathdotnet.com/docs/DescriptiveStatistics.html for more information.
Lastly, for those who want to get the fastest possible result and sacrifice some precision, read "one-pass" algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Rapid_calculation_methods

I see what you're doing, and I use something similar. It seems to me you're not going far enough. I tend to encapsulate all data processing into a single class, that way I can cache the values that are calculated until the list changes.
for instance:
public class StatProcessor{
private list<double> _data; //this holds the current data
private _avg; //we cache average here
private _avgValid; //a flag to say weather we need to calculate the average or not
private _calcAvg(); //calculate the average of the list and cache in _avg, and set _avgValid
public double average{
get{
if(!_avgValid) //if we dont HAVE to calculate the average, skip it
_calcAvg(); //if we do, go ahead, cache it, then set the flag.
return _avg; //now _avg is garunteed to be good, so return it.
}
}
...more stuff
Add(){
//add stuff to the list here, and reset the flag
}
}
You'll notice that using this method, only the first request for average actually computes the average. After that, as long as we don't add (or remove, or modify at all, but those arnt shown) anything from the list, we can get the average for basically nothing.
Additionally, since the average is used in the algorithm for the standard deviation, computing the standard deviation first will give us the average for free, and computing the average first will give us a little performance boost in the standard devation calculation, assuming we remember to check the flag.
Furthermore! places like the average function, where you're looping through every value already anyway, is a great time to cache things like the minimum and maximum values. Of course, requests for this information need to first check whether theyve been cached, and that can cause a relative slowdown compared to just finding the max using the list, since it does all the extra work setting up all the concerned caches, not just the one your accessing.