Excel pixels not proportional to points - excel

I've noticed that (by changing column width) that the column width measured in points is not proportional to the pixel size. For example, at 21.44 points the pixel width of a column is 200. But at 20 pixels the width becomes 1.44 points, not the expected 2.14 points.
This is very confusing as I'm trying to write a code in VBA which will divide a particular size in 'n' different columns of equal size. Can anyone explain this abnormality? How can I write a code to divide the width (since the parameters for the column width are in points)?
Thanks

So I just was trying things and stumbled across this.
Maybe the numbers are off from a "true" width. If the theory is correct, then there must exist such an offset.
(21.44 + x) = 10 (1.44 + x)
x = 0.7822
Now let's see if this offset works for other some other lengths. For 80 pixels, the length mentioned by MS Excel is 8.11 points. Thus the true length is 8.89. The true length of a column with a width 20 pixels is 1.44 + 0.7822 = 2.222. Note that 2.222 * 4 = 8.89 approx. And this works for some other numbers as well, so I guess the theory should be correct.
Thus to answer the question, add the offset 0.7822 to the observed column width that you need to divide. Then divide it by 'n'. Subtract the offset to obtain the length 'x'. Then use the command Columns(var).ColumnWidth = x for each of the n columns

Related

How can I calculate the area of a slice of a superellipse?

Say I have a superellipse with a given width, height and eccentricity (n). I want to create x horizontal slices of equal height. How can I calculate the area of each slice?
I don't even need exact values for the specific project I'm working on, only close approximations.
You can make integral for area of superellipse slice like this (4) and integrate it numerically in needed range instead of 0..a
I think that for approximation simple method of midpoint rectangles is enough:
for slice interval y0..y1 choose number of sub intervals n, step h = (y1-y0)/n and calculate function value (y instead of x) in points y0 + h/2 + h*i, i = 0..n-1, then sum these values and multiply sum by y1-y0.

Bitmap pattern recogination

Describe and analyze an algorithm that finds the maximum-area rectangular
pattern that appears more than once in a given bitmap. Specifically, given
a two-dimensional array M[1 .. n, 1 .. n] of bits as input, your algorithm
should output the area of the largest repeated rectangular pattern in M.
For example, given the bitmap shown on the left in the figure below, your
algorithm should return the integer 195, which is the area of the 15 x 13
doggo. (Although it doesn’t happen in this example, the two copies of the
repeated pattern might overlap.)
Image: enter image description here
Using term rectangle instead of sub-matrix.
Brute Force Approach O(n^8)
Take two distinct positions A and B in matrix. Then consider all rectangles in the matrix with A as top left corner. Similarly consider all rectangles with B as top left corner. Suppose we have a rectangle with top-left corner A of length l and breadth b, then take corresponding rectangle with top left corner B, length l, breath b (Assuming both such rectangles exist). If every bit of both rectangles match, then we have a pattern of area of lb repeating and if lb is greater than previously seen maximum area, update the maximum area.
Repeat this procedure for all pairs of A and B.
Time Complexity : Without making analysis complex, let us assume that for every point P in matrix,for all rectangles with P as top left corner, possible maximum length of rectangle is n (But this is not true, for example consider point in the last row and last column of matrix). Let us make similar assumption for maximum possible breath of rectangle.
Then from product rule in counting, there are n^2 possible rectangles with point P as their top left corner.
This estimate is not so bad because according to this, there are total n^4 rectangles possible, as there are n^2 points in the rectangle and we have n^2 rectangles per point.
Actual answer is ( (n+1) Choose 2 ) * ( (n+1) Choose 2 ), which is in the order of n^4
So in total, for each pair, we'd compare n^2 rectangles. And similar to above, let us estimate that there are n^2 points in each rectangle for easy calculations. So for a pair of points A and B, we'll have O(n^4) comparisons because for each rectangle, we need to check all of their corresponding points.
And there are ( n^2 Choose 2 ) pairs of points in total, which is of order n^4. So we'd have overall time complexity of O(n^8).
Avoiding Repeated Calculations O(n^6)
We see that we are repeatedly checking same area again and again. For example consider two rectangles with top-left corners at A and B respectively, with length l and breadth b. Again when we check another corresponding rectangles with top-left corners at A and B with length (l+1) and breadth b, we are again checking rectangle of length l and breadth b.
So we use memoization to avoid repeated calculations.
Assume length of a rectangle is measured horizontally and breadth vertically measured.
Consider rectangles of length l+1 and breadth b with top-left corners at A and B. Now we need to compare if all values of corresponding points in rectangles match. A_r, B_r be points to right of A and B respectively. Then if rectangles have same values for all corresponding points, rectangles of length l, breadth b with top left corners A and B must repeat. Similarly rectangles of length l and breadth b with top-left corners at A_r and B_r must match.
Consider below figure :
Time Complexity By above procedure, it'd take O(1) time to compare two rectangles. So compared to above case, time complexity is reduced by a factor of n^2 (which was time required to compare rectangles in earlier case). So O(n^6) time in this case.
Let us represent (P, m, n) as rectangle with top-left corner P, length m and breadth m.
Removing unnecessary calculations O(n^5)
In the above approach, even if we know that if rectangles (A, l, b) and (B, l, b) do not match we again compare the rectangles (A, l+1, b) and (B, l+1, B).
So suppose now we have rectangles with top-left corners A and B each of length l, then what is maximum possible breadth of the rectangles?
If all the corresponding elements in top row of each rectangle do not match, then answer is 0. But if all corresponding rows match, then the answer is 1 + (max.breadth of rectangles of length l but with top-left corners below A and B).
And similar to above approach this calculation would take O(1) time, as we need breadth that of (A, B, l-1) and that of below rectangles with length l.
Refer to this answer Largest Square Block for more clarity.
Time Complexity For each pair of points in the matrix, we have to store max. breadth for length 1, 2, ...n. And there are order of n^4 such pairs. And we can check obtain each value in O(1) time. So overall time complexity is O(n^5). And finding max. area for each length of rectangle for each pair is obvious here.
Further Optimization O(n^4)
Imagine you have two copies of bitmaps. One is glued to the ground and other can move on top the glued one. Let us call fixed one as base and other one as moving bitmap.
Now top-left corner of moving bitmap can be on one of (n^2 - 1) points of base, except the case where moving bitmap sits on top of base. Now in each case, there are some points left-out i.e for some points on base bitmap, there will not be a point of moving one on top of it and vice-versa. Assume top-left corner of moving bitmap needs to have an element of base bitmap below it.
Now take one instance of these (n^2 - 1) configurations. And for all points on moving bitmap which have a point of base bitmap below them, let us construct a new matrix such that it contains "Y" if top and bottom element of both the bitmaps are same, else it'd contain "N". And remember, the size of matrix is same as no of elements on moving bitmap which have an element of base bitmap below them.
Then, maximum area of repeated pattern for that portions of base and moving bitmaps would be maximum solid block area containing all Y's, which can be done in O(n^2) time.
Our required answer is maximum of answers in all these (n^2 - 1) configurations.
Refer to Largest rectangle containing all Y's for further clarity
Time Complexity For each configuration, constructing new matrix of "Y" and "N"'s would take O(n^2) time and maximum area calculation also O(n^2) time.
And there are (n^2- 1) such configurations, so overall O(n^4) time.
Further Optimization O(n^3 polylog(n))
Consider in above bitmap :
For length : 1, a rectangle with length : 1 and breadth 3 is
repeating twice. (1st and 2nd columns are same in bitmap). So
maxBreadth(1) is 3.
For length : 2, a rectangle with length : 2 and breadth 2 is
repeating twice. So maxBreadth(2) is 2.
The rectangle is :
0
0
0
0
For length : 3, a rectangle with length : 3 and breadth 1 is
repeating twice. So maxBreadth(3) is 1.
For lengths : 4, no rectangle with length : 4 is repeating in the
bitMap, so maxBreadth(4) is 0.
Consider you have a method named maxBreadth which takes a bitmap matrix and length L as input and returns to you the maximum breadth B for which there is a repeating rectangle of with length L and breadth B in the bitmap.
Using this, can you find the area of largest repeating rectangle in a bitmap?? Iterate over each length. We now know that there is a rectangle repeating in the bitmap with area length * maxBreadth(bitMap, length). Update the corresponding maximum area encountered till now.
So now let's focus on maxBreadth method.
Observations :
If a rectangle of length 3 and breadth 5 is not repeating in given bitmap then a rectangle of length 3 and breadth 6 definitely will not be repeating in the bitmap. Generally if a rectangle of length l and breadth b does not repeat in bitMap, any rectangle of length l and breadth > b does not repeat in bitMap. Same goes for length also.
So based on above observation, you can do binary search to find maxBreadth of given length.
If rectangle of length L breadth B is
repeating, then check for breadth 2B
not repeating, then check for breadth B/2
Ok, now how to check if any rectangle of dimensions (l, b) is repeating in a bitMap? There are n^2 such rectangles, so will you compare each with all the others?
What will you do if you asked if an array of numbers is having a repeated element efficiently? Answer is to sort them and check
So take all the n^2 rectangles and sort them and check if there is any repeating one. And how to compare two 2D rectangles, just divide the rectangle into 4 quadrants and compare them individually. In this way we only need to store sorted indices for breadths 1, 2, 4, 8, ... n. and also for lengths 1, 2, 4, 8, ....n.
Each sorting takes O(n^2 log(n)) time for given (length, breadth)
And for each length we perform this operation log(n) times, so total O((n.logn)^2) time complexity for maxBreadth operation.
Finally we call the method maxBreadth n times, so overall time complexity is O(n^3 log(n)^2) and space complexity is O((n.logn)^2)
Note : This O(n^3 log(n)^2) method not only works for bitMaps but also for matrices containing any number of distinct arbitrary numbers to search for maximum repeating sub-matrix

Zoom couple of columns to fit page with VBA

I'm having trouble fitting my columns in Excel on a sheet.
I have a sheet with columns from A to CK (can be different per project).
I don't need to print column A, but column B has to be on all pages and next to column B has to be 3 columns. So that will make column "B,C:E" on first page, next page "B,F:H", and so on... Column B is set as title, so it will be printed on every page.
My problem is to set the scale. What I'm doing:
Take pagesize and translate to points, take off margin left and margin right = my printable area
Get the width of range("B:E") = my range to fit the page
Divide my printable area by my range to fit, multiply that with 100%, and extract 1% to make sure it will fit
The outcome in my situation is 83, but is has to be 77 to fit the page. I'll have to find other numbers I think, but I don't know how and which...
My code:
If ActiveSheet.Name = "Meterkastlijst" Then
Dim lngZoom As Long
Dim lngKolB As Long
Dim lngPagB As Long
lngKolB = ActiveSheet.Range("B:E").Width
If ActiveSheet.PageSetup.PaperSize = xlPaperA4 Then
lngPagB = CLng(Application.CentimetersToPoints(21)) - CLng((ActiveSheet.PageSetup.LeftMargin + ActiveSheet.PageSetup.RightMargin))
ElseIf ActiveSheet.PageSetup.PaperSize = xlPaperA3 Then
lngPagB = CLng(Application.CentimetersToPoints(29.7)) - CLng((ActiveSheet.PageSetup.LeftMargin + ActiveSheet.PageSetup.RightMargin))
End If
If lngPagB <> 0 And lngKolB <> 0 Then
lngZoom = ((lngPagB / lngKolB) * 100) - 1
With ActiveSheet.PageSetup
.Zoom = lngZoom
End With
End If
End If
Different widths:
Column B: 45 (319 pixels) -> in Excel, set with VBA
Column C: 15 (109 pixels) -> in Excel, set with VBA
Column D: 30 (214 pixels) -> in Excel, set with VBA
Column E: 20 (144 pixels) -> in Excel, set with VBA
Column B-E: 589 points -> with VBA
Page: 21 centimeters (595 points)
Margins (left & right): 1.8 centimeters (50.4 points)
Print area: 595 - 101 (100.8) = 494 points
With numbers above it calculates 83%, but then it doesn't fit, when I set it manually to 77% it does fit, but how can I get this number with VBA? I don't understand the column widths, what I see in Excel and how I set it in VBA (45+15+30+20) is different from what VBA tells me it should be (589)...
Column Width Units
Column width is measured in Characters, Points, Centimeters / Inches, Pixels, ...
Column width in Characters
If you set a column width by manual value input or by mouse, you see the "amount of standard font number characters". Please refer to Microsoft support for details.
This value can be read and written in VBA: .Range.ColumnWidth = 10.78.
The maximum value is 255.
Column width in Points
This is an internal value not shown in GUI during manual resize of a column.
It corresponds to 72 points per inch.
In VBA it can only be read: .Range.Width
Column width in Pixels
Excel shows the column width in pixels (in parentheses) during manual resize of a column width in normal view. This value can not be read or written directly in VBA.
Column width in Centimeters or Inches
During manual resize within the page layout view Excel shows column width in centimeters (or inches) instead of pixels.
Only this value depends on print zoom level!
The measurement unit itself can be read in VBA:
Application.MeasurementUnit ' 0 = xlInches, 1 = xlCentimeters, 2 = xlMillimeters
Conversion Formulas
By this you may check or verify all values in your environment:
Dim ScreenResolution As Double
Dim ColumnWidthChars As Double
Dim ColumnWidthPoints As Double
Dim ColumnWidthPixels As Double
Dim ColumnWidthInches As Double
Dim ColumnWidthCentimeters As Double
ScreenResolution = 120 ' normal (96 dpi) or large (120 dpi)
ColumnWidthChars = ActiveSheet.Columns(1).ColumnWidth
ColumnWidthPoints = ActiveSheet.Columns(1).Width
ColumnWidthPixels = (ColumnWidthPoints / 72) * ScreenResolution
ColumnWidthInches = ColumnWidthPoints / 72 * ActiveSheet.PageSetup.Zoom / 100
ColumnWidthCentimeters = ColumnWidthInches * 2.54
Debug.Print ColumnWidthChars, ColumnWidthPoints, ColumnWidthInches, _
ColumnWidthCentimeters, ColumnWidthPixels
ScreenResolution may be retrieved with API function GetDeviceCaps(hDC, 88)
Rounding Effects
Excel stores the character-based .Range.ColumnWidth with decimals for each relevant column in the workbook file. If you set it to 100, it is stored as e. g.
<cols><col min="1" max="1" width="100.77734375" customWidth="1"/></cols>
After reopening this file, the reported .ColumnWidth is 100 without decimals.
If you set a large column width and switch between normal view and page layout view, then you may register difference of about 2% between the measures (.Range.Width and pixels suddenly change) - but all values still correspond to each other according to above formulas.
Display Scaling Dependency
All different column width values are independent of Excel's view zoom level and/or Windows 10 display scaling.
Print Zoom Dependency
Only the inch- and centimeter values change, if you change the print zoom level.
But you get more or less columns i. e. amount of points on your paper.
Excel measures .PageSetup.Leftmargin in points (with a scale of 72 points per inch). This corresponds to .Range.Width which is also measured in points.
Example: If I set both paper margins to 5.5 cm, then the resulting A4 paper width of 10 cm holds e. g. two columns with a total .Width of appr. 283 points which corresponds to 72 points/inch.
If I set the print zoom to 83 percent a .Width of appr. 340 points is maximum, and at a print zoom of 30 % it's almost 943 points.
Print Scaling
The calculation of a print zoom factor is
WorkSheet.PageSetup.Zoom = (PageWidthInPoints / AllColumnsWidthInPoints) * 100
Your calculation seems to be correct, but I would subtract at least 2 % (see rounding effects above).

Calculating the fraction of the area of multiple squares overlapped by a circle

This is a geometrical question based on a programming problem I have. Basically, I have a MySQL database full of latitude and longitude points, spaced out to be 1km from each other, corresponding to a population of people who live within the square kilometer around each point. I then want to know the relative fraction of each of those grids taken up by a circle of arbitrary size that overlaps them, so I can figure out how many people roughly live within a given circle.
Here is a practical example of one form of the problem (distances not to scale):
I am interested in knowing the population of people who live within a radius of point X. My database figures out that its entries for points A and B are close enough to point X to be relevant. Point A in this example is something like 40.7458, -74.0375, and point B is something like 40.7458, -74.0292. Each of those green lines from A and B to its grid edge represents 0.5 km, so that the gray circle around A and B each represent 1 km^2 respectively.
Point X is at around 40.744, -74.032, and has a radius (in purple) of 0.05 km.
Now I can easily calculate the red lines shown using geographic trig functions. So I know that the line AX is about .504 km, and the distance line BX is about .309 km, for whatever that gets me.
So my question is thus: what's a solid way for calculating the fraction of grid A and the fraction of grid B taken up by the purple circle inscribed around X?
Ultimately I will be taking the population totals and multiplying them by this fraction. So in this case, the 1 km^2 grid around corresponds to 9561 people, and the grid around B is 10763 people. So if I knew (just hypothetically) that the radius around X covered 1% of the area of A and 3% of the area of B, I could make a reasonable back-of-the-envelope estimate of the total population covered by that circle by multiplying the A and B populations by their respective fractions and just summing them.
I've only done it with two squares above, but depending on the size of the radius (which can be arbitrary), there may be a whole host of possible squares, like so, making it a more general problem:
In some cases, where it is easy to figure out that the square grid in question is 100% encompassed by the radius, it is in principle pretty easy (e.g. if the distance between AX was smaller than the radius around X, I know I don't have to do any further math).
Now, it's easy enough to figure out which points are within the range of the circle. But I'm a little stuck on figuring out what fractions of their corresponding areas are.
Thank you for your help.
I ended up coming up with what worked out to be a pretty good approximate solution, I think. Here is how it looks in PHP:
//$p is an array of latitude, longitude, value, and distance from the centerpoint
//$cx,$cy are the lat/lon of the center point, $cr is the radius of the circle
//$pdist is the distance from each node to its edge (in this case, .5 km, since it is a 1km x 1km grid)
function sum_circle($p, $cx, $cy, $cr, $pdist) {
$total = 0; //initialize the total
$hyp = sqrt(($pdist*$pdist)+($pdist*$pdist)); //hypotenuse of distance
for($i=0; $i<count($p); $i++) { //cycle over all points
$px = $p[$i][0]; //x value of point
$py = $p[$i][1]; //y value of point
$pv = $p[$i][2]; //associated value of point (e.g. population)
$dist = $p[$i][3]; //calculated distance of point coordinate to centerpoint
//first, the easy case — items that are well outside the maximum distance
if($dist>$cr+$hyp) { //if the distance is greater than circle radius plus the hypoteneuse
$per = 0; //then use 0% of its associated value
} else if($dist+$hyp<=$cr) { //other easy case - completely inside circle (distance + hypotenuse <= radius)
$per = 1; //then use 100% of its associated value
} else { //the edge cases
$mx = ($cx-$px); $my = ($cy-$py); //calculate the angle of the difference
$theta = abs(rad2deg(atan2($my,$mx)));
$theta = abs((($theta + 89) % 90 + 90) % 90 - 89); //reduce it to a positive degree between 0 and 90
$tf = abs(1-($theta/45)); //this basically makes it so that if the angle is close to 45, it returns 0,
//if it is close to 0 or 90, it returns 1
$hyp_adjust = ($hyp*(1-$tf)+($pdist*$tf)); //now we create a mixed value that is weighted by whether the
//hypotenuse or the distance between cells should be used
$per = ($cr-$dist+$hyp_adjust)/100; //lastly, we use the above numbers to estimate what percentage of
//the square associated with the centerpoint is covered
if($per>1) $per = 1; //normalize for over 100% or under 0%
if($per<0) $per = 0;
}
$total+=$per*$pv; //add the value multiplied by the percentage to the total
}
return $total;
}
This seems to work and is pretty fast (even though it does use some trig on the edge cases). The basic logic is that when calculating edge cases, the two extreme possibilities is that the circle radius is either exactly perpendicular to the grid, or exactly at 45 degree angles from it. So it figures out roughly where between those extremes it falls and then uses that to figure out roughly what percentage of the grid square is covered. It gives plausible results in my testing.
For the size of the squares and circles I am using, this seems to be adequate?
I wrote a little application in Processing.js to try and help me work this out. Without explaining all of it, you can see how the algorithm is "thinking" by looking at this screenshot:
Basically, if the circle is yellow it means it has already figured out it is 100% in, and if it is red it is already quickly screened as 100% out. The other cases are the edge cases. The number (ranging from 0 to 1) under the dot is the (rounded) percentage of coverage calculated using the above method, while the number under that is the calculated theta value used in the above code.
For my purposes I think this approximation is workable.
With enough classification (sketched below) all computations can be reduced to a primitive calculation, the one that provides the angular area of the orange region depicted in the image
When y0 > 0, as illustrated above, and regardless of whether x0 is positive or negative, the orange area can be calculated accurately as the integral from x0 to x1 of sqrt(r^2 - y^2) minus the rectangular area (x1 - x0) * (y1 - y0). The integral has a well known closed expression and therefore there is no need to use any numerical algorithm for calculating it.
Other intersections between a circle and a square can be reduced to a combination of rectangles and right-angular shapes as the one painted in orange above. For instance, an intersection delimited by the horizontal and vertical orange rays in the following picture can be expressed by summing the area of the red rectangle plus two angular shapes: the blue and the green.
The blue area results from a direct application of the primitive case identified above (where the inferior rectangle collapses to nothing.) The green one can also be measured in the same way, once the negative y coordinate is replaced by its absolute value (the other y being 0).
Applying these ideas one could enumerate all cases. Basically, one should consider the case where just one, two, three or four corners of the square lie inside the circle, while the remaining (if any) fall outside. The enumeration is a problem in itself, but it can be solved, at least in theory, by considering a relatively small number of "typical" configurations.
For each of the cases enumerated as described a decomposition on some few rectangles and angular areas has to be calculated and the parts added up (or subtracted) as shown in the three-color example above. The area of every part would reduce to rectangular or primitive angular areas.
A considerably amount of work has to be done to turn this line of attack into a working algorithm. A deeper analysis could shed some light on how to minimize the number of "typical" configurations to consider. If not, I think that the amount of combinations to consider, however large, should be manageable.
In case your problem admits an approximate answer there is another technique you could use which is much simpler to program. The whole idea of this problem reduces to calculate the area of the intersection of a square and a circle. I didn't explain this in my other answer, but finding the squares that are likely to intercept the circle shouldn't be a problem, otherwise, let us know.
The idea of calculating the approximate area of the intersection is very simple. Generate enough points in the square at random and check how many of them belong in the circle. The ratio between the number of points in the circle and the total number of random points in the square will give you the proportion of the intersection with respect to the square's area.
Now, given that you have to repeat the same routine for all squares surrounding the circle (i.e., squares which center has a distance to the circle's center not very different from the circle's radius) you could re-use the random points by translating them from one square to the other.
I don't want to go into details if this method is not appropriate for your problem, so let me just indicate that generating random points uniformly distributed in the square is fairly easy. You only need to generate random numbers for the x coordinate and, independently, random numbers for y. Then just consider all pairs (x, y). Then, for every (x, y) verify whether (x - a)^2 + (y - b)^2 <= r^2 or not, where (a, b) stands for the circle's center and r for the radius.

Probability question: Estimating the number of attempts needed to exhaustively try all possible placements in a word search

Would it be reasonable to systematically try all possible placements in a word search?
Grids commonly have dimensions of 15*15 (15 cells wide, 15 cells tall) and contain about 15 words to be placed, each of which can be placed in 8 possible directions. So in general it seems like you can calculate all possible placements by the following:
width*height*8_directions_to_place_word*number of words
So for such a grid it seems like we only need to try 15*15*8*15 = 27,000 which doesn't seem that bad at all. I am expecting some huge number so either the grid size and number of words is really small or there is something fishy with my math.
Formally speaking, assuming that x is number of rows and y is number of columns you should sum all the probabilities of every possible direction for every possible word.
Inputs are: x, y, l (average length of a word), n (total words)
so you have
horizontally a word can start from 0 to x-l and going right or from l to x going left for each row: 2x(x-l)
same approach is used for vertical words: they can go from 0 to y-l going down or from l to y going up. So it's 2y(y-l)
for diagonal words you shoul consider all possible start positions x*y and subtract l^2 since a rect of the field can't be used. As before you multiply by 4 since you have got 4 possible directions: 4*(x*y - l^2).
Then you multiply the whole result for the number of words included:
total = n*(2*x*(x-l)+2*y*(y-l)+4*(x*y-l^2)

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