Discovering an elusive number using the fewest attempts possible

I'm currently working on a Python script to efficiently find an unknown number with the fewest attempts possible.

The only information I have about the mystery number is that it is less than 10000.

Each time I input the wrong guess, I receive an "error" message. But when I correctly identify the number, I get a "success" message.

For the sake of this example, let's say the number we are trying to find is 124.

How would you go about solving this challenge using Python?

I appreciate any guidance as I am finding this problem quite challenging :(

pythonpython-2.7python-3.xmath

Answer №1

When the only information you have is that a number is less than 10000, you will need to check all numbers between 1 and 9999 (inclusive). The binary search algorithm suggested in the comments may not be helpful in this case as a miss does not provide any indication of whether the target number is higher or lower.

for i in range(1, 10000):
    if i == number_you_are_looking_for:
        print("found it")
        break

Answer №2

One efficient method to find a number is binary search, solving it in O(log n) time complexity.

def binary_search(n, min_value, max_value):
    attempts = 0
    is_found = False

    if max_value < min_value:
        print("The maximum value must be greater than the minimum value")
    elif n < min_value or n > max_value:
        print("The number should be within the range of min_value and max_value")
    else:
        while min_value < max_value and not is_found:
            attempts += 1

            mid_value = (min_value + max_value)//2

            if mid_value == n:
                is_found = True
            else:
                if n < mid_value:
                    max_value = mid_value - 1
                else:
                    min_value = mid_value + 1

            print([(min_value, max_value), (mid_value, n), attempts])

        print("The number is:", str(n))
        print("Attempts:", str(attempts))

Examples:

binary_search(7, 0, 10)
>> The number is: 7
>> Attempts: 2

binary_search(667, 0, 1000)
>> The number is: 667
>> Attempts: 8

binary_search(2**19, 2**18, 2**20)
>> The number is: 524288
>> Attempts: 19

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