Scala tail recursive method has an divide and remainder error - scala

Question

I'm currently computing the binomial coefficient of two natural numbers by write a tail recursion in Scala. But my code has something wrong with the dividing numbers, integer division by k like I did as that will give you a non-zero remainder and hence introduce rounding errors. So could anyone help me figure it out, how to fix it ?
def binom(n: Int, k: Int): Int = {
require(0 <= k && k <= n)
def binomtail(n: Int, k: Int, ac: Int): Int = {
if (n == k || k == 0) ac
else binomtail(n - 1, k - 1, (n*ac)/k)
}
binomtail(n,k,1)
}

Answer 1

In general, it holds:
binom(n, k) = if (k == 0 || k == n) 1 else binom(n - 1, k - 1) * n / k
If you want to compute it in linear time, then you have to make sure that each intermediate result is an integer. Now,
binom(n - k + 1, 1)
is certainly an integer (it's just n - k + 1). Starting with this number, and incrementing both arguments by one, you can arrive at binom(n, k) with the following intermediate steps:
binom(n - k + 1, 1)
binom(n - k + 2, 2)
...
binom(n - 2, k - 2)
binom(n - 1, k - 1)
binom(n, k)
It means that you have to "accumulate" in the right order, from 1 up to k, not from k down to 1 - then it is guaranteed that all intermediate results correspond to actual binomial coefficients, and are therefore integers (not fractions). Here is what it looks like as tail-recursive function:
def binom(n: Int, k: Int): Int = {
require(0 <= k && k <= n)
#annotation.tailrec
def binomtail(nIter: Int, kIter: Int, ac: Int): Int = {
if (kIter > k) ac
else binomtail(nIter + 1, kIter + 1, (nIter * ac) / kIter)
}
if (k == 0 || k == n) 1
else binomtail(n - k + 1, 1, 1)
}
Little visual test:
val n = 12
for (i <- 0 to n) {
print(" " * ((n - i) * 2))
for (j <- 0 to i) {
printf(" %3d", binom(i, j))
}
println()
}
prints:
1
1 1
1 2 1
1 3 3 1
1 4 6 4 1
1 5 10 10 5 1
1 6 15 20 15 6 1
1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1
1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1
1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1
1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1
1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1
1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1
Looks ok, compare it with this, if you want.

Answer 2

Andrey Tyukin's excellent example will fail with larger n, say binom(10000, 2), but can be easily adapted to use BigInt.
def binom(n: Int, k: Int): BigInt = {
require(0 <= k && k <= n)
#annotation.tailrec
def binomtail(nIter: Int, kIter: Int, ac: BigInt): BigInt = {
if (kIter > k) ac
else binomtail(nIter + 1, kIter + 1, (nIter * ac) / kIter)
}
if (k == 0 || k == n) 1
else binomtail(n - k + 1, 1, BigInt(1))
}