花花酱 LeetCode 1000. Minimum Cost to Merge Stones

There are N piles of stones arranged in a row.  The i-th pile has stones[i] stones.

A move consists of merging exactly K consecutive piles into one pile, and the cost of this move is equal to the total number of stones in these K piles.

Find the minimum cost to merge all piles of stones into one pile.  If it is impossible, return -1.

Example 1:

Input: stones = [3,2,4,1], K = 2
Output: 20
Explanation: 
We start with [3, 2, 4, 1].
We merge [3, 2] for a cost of 5, and we are left with [5, 4, 1].
We merge [4, 1] for a cost of 5, and we are left with [5, 5].
We merge [5, 5] for a cost of 10, and we are left with [10].
The total cost was 20, and this is the minimum possible.

Example 2:

Input: stones = [3,2,4,1], K = 3
Output: -1
Explanation: After any merge operation, there are 2 piles left, and we can't merge anymore.  So the task is impossible.

Example 3:

Input: stones = [3,5,1,2,6], K = 3
Output: 25
Explanation: 
We start with [3, 5, 1, 2, 6].
We merge [5, 1, 2] for a cost of 8, and we are left with [3, 8, 6].
We merge [3, 8, 6] for a cost of 17, and we are left with [17].
The total cost was 25, and this is the minimum possible.

Note:

• 1 <= stones.length <= 30
• 2 <= K <= 30
• 1 <= stones[i] <= 100

Solution: DP

dp[i][j][k] := min cost to merge subarray i ~ j into k piles
Init: dp[i][j][k] = 0 if i==j and k == 1 else inf
ans: dp[0][n-1][1]
transition:
1. dp[i][j][k] = min{dp[i][m][1] + dp[m+1][j][k-1]} for all i <= m < j
2. dp[i][j][1] = dp[i][j][K] + sum(A[i]~A[j])

Time complexity: O(n^3)
Space complexity: O(n^2*K)

Solution 2: DP

dp[l][i] := min cost to merge [i, i + l) into as less piles as possible. Number of merges will be (l-1) / (K – 1) and
Transition: dp[l][i] = min(dp[m][i] + dp[l – m][i + m]) for 1 <= m < l
if ((l – 1) % (K – 1) == 0) [i, i + l) can be merged into 1 pile, dp[l][i] += sum(A[i:i+l])

Time complexity: O(n^3 / k)
Space complexity: O(n^2)