LeetCode – Triangle (Java)

Given a triangle, find the minimum path sum from top to bottom. Each step you may move to adjacent numbers on the row below.

For example, given the following triangle

[
     [2],
    [3,4],
   [6,5,7],
  [4,1,8,3]
]

The minimum path sum from top to bottom is 11 (i.e., 2 + 3 + 5 + 1 = 11).

Note: Bonus point if you are able to do this using only O(n) extra space, where n is the total number of rows in the triangle.

Top-Down Approach (Wrong Answer!)

This solution gets wrong answer! I will try to make it work later.

public class Solution {
    public int minimumTotal(ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> triangle) {
 
       int[] temp = new int[triangle.size()];
		int minTotal = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
 
		for(int i=0; i< temp.length; i++){
			temp[i] = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
		}
 
		if (triangle.size() == 1) {
			return Math.min(minTotal, triangle.get(0).get(0));
		}
 
		int first = triangle.get(0).get(0);
 
		for (int i = 0; i < triangle.size() - 1; i++) {
			for (int j = 0; j <= i; j++) {
 
				int a, b;
 
				if(i==0 && j==0){
					a = first + triangle.get(i + 1).get(j);
					b = first + triangle.get(i + 1).get(j + 1);
 
				}else{
					a = temp[j] + triangle.get(i + 1).get(j);
					b = temp[j] + triangle.get(i + 1).get(j + 1);
 
				}
 
				temp[j] = Math.min(a, temp[j]);
				temp[j + 1] = Math.min(b, temp[j + 1]);
			}
		}
 
		for (int e : temp) {
			if (e < minTotal)
				minTotal = e;
		}
 
		return minTotal;
    }
}

Bottom-Up (Good Solution)

We can actually start from the bottom of the triangle.

public int minimumTotal(ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> triangle) {
	int[] total = new int[triangle.size()];
	int l = triangle.size() - 1;
 
	for (int i = 0; i < triangle.get(l).size(); i++) {
		total[i] = triangle.get(l).get(i);
	}
 
	// iterate from last second row
	for (int i = triangle.size() - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
		for (int j = 0; j < triangle.get(i + 1).size() - 1; j++) {
			total[j] = triangle.get(i).get(j) + Math.min(total[j], total[j + 1]);
		}
	}
 
	return total[0];
}