Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Sync largest-series-product docs with problem-specifications (#625)
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
* Sync largest-series-product docs with problem-specifications

The largest-series-product exercise has been overhauled as part of a project
to make practice exercises more consistent and friendly.

For more context, please see the discussion in the forum, as well as
the pull request that updated the exercise in the problem-specifications
repository:

- https://forum.exercism.org/t/new-project-making-practice-exercises-more-consistent-and-human-across-exercism/3943
- exercism/problem-specifications#2246

* Delete test cases from largest-series-product

This deletes two deprecated test cases so that we can
dramatically simplify the instructions for this exercise.
  • Loading branch information
kytrinyx committed May 16, 2023
1 parent 68edca2 commit 662e161
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 4 changed files with 26 additions and 20 deletions.
31 changes: 19 additions & 12 deletions exercises/practice/largest-series-product/.docs/instructions.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,19 +1,26 @@
# Instructions

Given a string of digits, calculate the largest product for a contiguous substring of digits of length n.
Your task is to look for patterns in the long sequence of digits in the encrypted signal.

For example, for the input `"1027839564"`, the largest product for a series of 3 digits is 270 `(9 * 5 * 6)`, and the largest product for a series of 5 digits is 7560 `(7 * 8 * 3 * 9 * 5)`.
The technique you're going to use here is called the largest series product.

Note that these series are only required to occupy *adjacent positions* in the input; the digits need not be *numerically consecutive*.
Let's define a few terms, first.

For the input `"73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934"`,
the largest product for a series of 6 digits is 23520.
- **input**: the sequence of digits that you need to analyze
- **series**: a sequence of adjacent digits (those that are next to each other) that is contained within the input
- **span**: how many digits long each series is
- **product**: what you get when you multiply numbers together

For a series of zero digits, you need to return the empty product (the result of multiplying no numbers), which is 1.
Let's work through an example, with the input `"63915"`.

~~~~exercism/advanced
You do not need to understand why the empty product is 1 to solve this problem,
but in case you are interested, here is an informal argument: if we split a list of numbers `A` into two new lists `B` and `C`, then we expect `product(A) == product(B) * product(C)` because we don't expect the order that you multiply things to matter; now if we split a list containing only the number 3 into the empty list and a list containing the number 3 then the product of the empty list has to be 1 for `product([3]) == product([]) * product([3])` to be true.
The same kind of argument justifies why the sum of no numbers is 0.
~~~~
- To form a series, take adjacent digits in the original input.
- If you are working with a span of `3`, there will be three possible series:
- `"639"`
- `"391"`
- `"915"`
- Then we need to calculate the product of each series:
- The product of the series `"639"` is 162 (`6 × 3 × 9 = 162`)
- The product of the series `"391"` is 27 (`3 × 9 × 1 = 27`)
- The product of the series `"915"` is 45 (`9 × 1 × 5 = 45`)
- 162 is bigger than both 27 and 45, so the largest series product of `"63915"` is from the series `"639"`.
So the answer is **162**.
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
# Introduction

You work for a government agency that has intercepted a series of encrypted communication signals from a group of bank robbers.
The signals contain a long sequence of digits.
Your team needs to use various digital signal processing techniques to analyze the signals and identify any patterns that may indicate the planning of a heist.
2 changes: 2 additions & 0 deletions exercises/practice/largest-series-product/.meta/tests.toml
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -41,9 +41,11 @@ description = "rejects span longer than string length"

[06bc8b90-0c51-4c54-ac22-3ec3893a079e]
description = "reports 1 for empty string and empty product (0 span)"
include = false

[3ec0d92e-f2e2-4090-a380-70afee02f4c0]
description = "reports 1 for nonempty string and empty product (0 span)"
include = false

[6d96c691-4374-4404-80ee-2ea8f3613dd4]
description = "rejects empty string and nonzero span"
Expand Down
8 changes: 0 additions & 8 deletions exercises/practice/largest-series-product/runtests.jl
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -38,14 +38,6 @@ end
@test largest_product("99099", 3) == 0
end

@testset "reports 1 for empty string and empty product 0 span" begin
@test largest_product("", 0) == 1
end

@testset "reports 1 for nonempty string and empty product 0 span" begin
@test largest_product("123", 0) == 1
end

@testset "error handling" begin
@testset "span longer than string length" begin
@test_throws ArgumentError largest_product("123", 4)
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 662e161

Please sign in to comment.