What Are The Various Approaches To Solve The Ninja Training Problem?

Analyzing time management and problem-solving skills of the candidates is one of the top priorities for interviewers at companies.

A problem that resembles your actual working life as a part of a team of experts is the ninja training problem.

As you must know that being in a tech industry office, you will be constantly asked to juggle different types of tasks. These tasks might require excellence or at least basic knowledge of different skills.

Do you think you can manage the same? Well, with the right approach you can easily manage different tasks at your hand with appropriate skills.

Learning arrays and array-related problems like ninja training problems, merge sorted array problems, sorting arrays, and others can help you ace your interviews like a pro. You can also pay attention to topics like merge sorted linked list to ace your interview.

Let’s talk about the ninja training problem in detail. This article will cover everything you need to know about this problem along with different approaches to resolve it.

Let’s begin with understanding this problem.

What is the ninja training problem?

This problem is based on the concept of earning maximum points through skills. In this problem, you will be asked to present ways in which a ninja can be trained. Given that a ninja can be trained in one of the skills i.e. either running, practicing its fighting skills, or learning new moves for the next fight.

Each skill will give you a definite amount of points as merit rewards. You will have to maximize these rewards such that ninjas can be trained in a particular period as well.

Let’s discuss the most asked problem statement associated with the ninja training concept.

Problem statement

Here you are given the problem of preparing a schedule of “n” Training days for a ninja. Keep in mind that the ninja can devote his time only to a particular skill at a time. Also, each skill will give him merit points based on his excellence level. The skills in which a ninja needs his training are running, learning new tricks and moves, and practicing the fighting skills he already knows. Each skill training will yield a specific amount of merit points.

Generate a code to return a schedule such that these points are maximized.

Now, there are different ways of resolving the ninja training problem. In the next section of this article, we have covered all the efficient and accurate methods through which you can resolve the ninja training problem adequately.

Approaches To Resolving Ninja Training Problem

There are three main approaches or methods to resolve this type of problem. Let’s discuss each method in detail.

Method 1: Greedy approach

Approach: The idea of this method is to find out the maximum points by a common approach. In this approach, we consider the activity which holds the maximum value as per the problem. We will make sure that no activity is done on consecutive days. However, the process is not quite efficient. Let’s understand how?

Steps –

Initially, on the first day i.e. 0th day, we shall consider any activity that holds the maximum points amongst the total activities.
Now, on the next day i.e. the 1st day, this activity can not be performed given that an activity can not be done on consecutive days.
Hence, you will have to take activities with lower points
Print this final point or score for the ninja.

The final points available at the end of two days will be less for you through greedy solutions. Therefore, it is highly recommended to use other methods of solving this problem.

Method 2: Through recursive functions

Approach: In this method, the overall days, activities, and points are considered through a recursive method to ensure that no case is left unseen by you. Each case will be provided to you and hence you can check them.

The following steps show how this idea is executed to find out the best possible solution for the ninja training problem:

Convert the problem into an array of indexes. You can notice that the days in which ninjas need to be trained is a constantly changing factors. You can easily store days from 0 to n-1 days in the form of indexes.
The function you generate will take two parameters i.e. day and the last activity that you chose earlier.
Now, you have to ensure that you check all the indexes individually.
You will be given a list of options or choices from which you will have to select the most accurate one.
Lastly, after analyzing each choice, choose the most beneficial choice. It means that select a value where you find the maximum amount of merit points for the ninja

Through this process, you can simply ensure that each value and the possible case are analyzed by you for maximizing your merit score.

Method 3: By tabulation

Approach: The next method is to convert the problem into the form of a recursion stack. This resolves the problem of space complexity of forming different cases.

To execute this approach, the following steps are used:

First of all, you need to declare a 2-D array. Let’s call this array DP[]. In this array, you will store the number of days and 4 as the other parameter.
Now, you will have to assign the base conditions to this array. The base conditions will be on the 0th day where you can make 4 different cases
After this, you need to apply the logic of the recursive format in an iterative loop (a loop that stops after certain conditions are fulfilled). Through this loop, you can check all the index values.

Print the maximum value and that will be your answer!

Winding up

You can use various approaches to resolve the ninja training problem conveniently. Make sure you learn basic array-related and linked list-related concepts. Including merge sorted linked-list, searching through arrays, and loops in arrays. This will ensure that you get an adequate result for your ninja training problem.