中山大学算法课程题目详解（第十七周）

问题描述：

Given n balloons, indexed from 0 to n-1. Each balloon is painted with a number on it represented by array nums. You are asked to burst all the balloons. If the you burst balloon i you will get nums[left] * nums[i] * nums[right] coins. Here left and right are adjacent indices of i. After the burst, the left and right then becomes adjacent.

Find the maximum coins you can collect by bursting the balloons wisely.

Note: 
(1) You may imagine nums[-1] = nums[n] = 1. They are not real therefore you can not burst them.
(2) 0 ≤ n ≤ 500, 0 ≤ nums[i] ≤ 100

Example:

Given [3, 1, 5, 8]

Return 167

    nums = [3,1,5,8] --> [3,5,8] -->   [3,8]   -->  [8]  --> []
   coins =  3*1*5      +  3*5*8    +  1*3*8      + 1*8*1   = 167

Credits:
Special thanks to @dietpepsi for adding this problem and creating all test cases.

解决思路：

能够想到dp，但几乎是毫无思路的，因为无法得到正确的状态转移方程（自顶向下），如果我们删除了某个数，它必然影响到左右两侧的数，进行下次删除时，无法得到正确的转移关系。 
我们换种思路，从问题结束的状态往前推，确定最后一个被删除的数，然后左右两侧就是相同的子问题了，递归即可解。

具体代码实现：

int maxCoins(vector<int>& nums) {
        nums.insert(nums.begin(),1);
        nums.push_back(1);
        int n=nums.size();
        vector<vector<int>> dp(n,vector<int>(n,0));
        for(int i=2;i<n;i++)
        {
            for(int left=0;left<n-i;left++)
            {
                int right=left+i;
                for(int j=left+1;j<right;j++)
                    dp[left][right]=max(dp[left][right],dp[left][j]+dp[j][right]+nums[left]*nums[right]*nums[j]);
            }
        }
        return dp[0][n-1];
    }