Reaching nth Stair - dynamic-programming

Question

total number of ways to reach the nth floor with following types of moves:
Type 1 in a single move you can move from i to i+1 floor – you can use the this move any number of times
Type 2 in a single move you can move from i to i+2 floor – you can use this move any number of times
Type 3 in a single move you can move from i to i+3 floor – but you can use this move at most k times
i know how to reach nth floor by following step 1 ,step 2, step 3 any number of times using dp like dp[i]=dp[i-1]+dp[i-2]+dp[i-3].i am stucking in the condition of Type 3 movement with atmost k times.
someone tell me the approach here.

Answer 1

While modeling any recursion or dynamic programming problem, it is important to identify the goal, constraints, states, state function, state transitions, possible state variables and initial condition aka base state. Using this information we should try to come up with a recurrence relation.
In our current problem:
Goal: Our goal here is to somehow calculate number of ways to reach floor n while beginning from floor 0.
Constraints: We can move from floor i to i+3 at most K times. We name it as a special move. So, one can perform this special move at most K times.
State: In this problem, our situation of being at a floor could be one way to model a state. The exact situation can be defined by the state variables.
State variables: State variables are properties of the state and are important to identify a state uniquely. Being at a floor i alone is not enough in itself as we also have a constraint K. So to identify a state uniquely we want to have 2 state variables: i indicating floor ranging between 0..n and k indicating number of special move used out of K (capital K).
State functions: In our current problem, we are concerned with finding number of ways to reach a floor i from floor 0. We only need to define one function number_of_ways associated with corresponding state to describe the problem. Depending on problem, we may need to define more state functions.
State Transitions: Here we identify how can we transition between states. We can come freely to floor i from floor i-1 and floor i-2 without consuming our special move. We can only come to floor i from floor i-3 while consuming a special move, if i >=3 and special moves used so far k < K.
In other words, possible state transitions are:
state[i,k] <== state[i-1,k] // doesn't consume special move k
state[i,k] <== state[i-2,k] // doesn't consume special move k
state[i,k+1] <== state[i-3, k] if only k < K and i >= 3
We should now be able to form following recurrence relation using above information. While coming up with a recurrence relation, we must ensure that all the previous states needed for computation of current state are computed first. We can ensure the order by computing our states in the topological order of directed acyclic graph (DAG) formed by defined states as its vertices and possible transitions as directed edges. It is important to note that it is only possible to have such ordering if the directed graph formed by defined states is acyclic, otherwise we need to rethink if the states are correctly defined uniquely by its state variables.
Recurrence Relation:
number_of_ways[i,k] = ((number_of_ways[i-1,k] if i >= 1 else 0)+
(number_of_ways[i-2,k] if i >= 2 else 0) +
(number_of_ways[i-3,k-1] if i >= 3 and k < K else 0)
)
Base cases:
Base cases or solutions to initial states kickstart our recurrence relation and are sufficient to compute solutions of remaining states. These are usually trivial cases or smallest subproblems that can be solved without recurrence relation.
We can have as many base conditions as we require and there is no specific limit. Ideally we would want to have a minimal set of base conditions, enough to compute solutions of all remaining states. For the current problem, after initializing all not computed solutions so far as 0,
number_of_ways[0, 0] = 1
number_of_ways[0,k] = 0 where 0 < k <= K
Our required final answer will be sum(number_of_ways[n,k], for all 0<=k<=K).

Answer 2

You can use two-dimensional dynamic programming:
dp[i,j] is the solution value when exactly j Type-3 steps are used. Then
dp[i,j]=dp[i-1,j]+dp[i-2,j]+dp[i-3,j-1], and the initial values are dp[0,0]=0, dp[1,0]=1, and dp[3*m,m]=m for m<=k. You can build up first the d[i,0] values, then the d[i,1] values, etc. Or you can do a different order, as long as all necessary values are already computed.

Answer 3

Following #LaszloLadanyi approach ,below is the code snippet in python
def solve(self, n, k):
dp=[[0 for i in range(k+1)]for _ in range(n+1)]
dp[0][0]=1
for j in range(k+1):
for i in range(1,n+1):
dp[i][j]+=dp[i-1][j]
if i>1:
dp[i][j]+=dp[i-2][j]
if i>2 and j>0:
dp[i][j]+=dp[i-3][j-1]
return sum(dp[n])