Poor Pigs — LeetCode 458 Python Solution

The problem

There are buckets buckets of liquid, where exactly one of the buckets is poisonous. To figure out which one is poisonous, you feed some number of (poor) pigs the liquid to see whether they will die or not.

Example

Input

buckets = 4, minutesToDie = 15, minutesToTest = 15

Output

2

Explanation

We can determine the poisonous bucket as follows:

Python solution

class Solution:
    def poorPigs(self, buckets: int, minutesToDie: int, minutesToTest: int) -> int:
        base = minutesToTest // minutesToDie + 1
        res, p = 0, 1
        while p < buckets:
            p *= base
            res += 1
        return res

Complexity

Pattern: Dynamic Programming

Define a state, write the transition, and stop recomputing the same subproblem. LeetCode 458. Poor Pigs is filed here on both counts: the reference solution below belongs to the algorithm family this hub collects, and LeetCode tags it Dynamic Programming.

The dynamic programming guide has the Python template for the pattern and the 481 LeetCode problems that use it.

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