Question

I need to find the most effecient way to find a random element from the most popular category

From

4 Cheese
1 Olive
2 Mushroom
4 Ham
2 Chicken
4 Salad

I want either Cheese or Ham or Salad. If there are multiple top categories I don’t care which category I will get my item from.

On the input I have Iterator<Foo> where Foo implements

Interface Foo {
    int getCategory();
}

My current code looks like this:

Foo getItem(Iterator<Foo> it) {
    Map<Integer, List<Foo>> categoryMap = new HashMap<Integer, List<Foo>>();
    while(it.hasNext()) {
        Foo foo = it.next();
        int category = foo.getCategory();

        List<Foo> l = categoryMap.get(category);
        if(l == null) {
            l = new ArrayList<Foo>();
            categoryMap.put(category, l);
        }

        l.add(foo);
    }

    int longest_list_size = 0;
    int longest_category_id = -1;

    Set<Integer> categories = categoryMap.keySet()

    for(Integer c:  categories ) {
        int list_size = categoryMap.get(c).size();
        if(list_size  > longest_list_size) {
           longest_list_size = list_size;
           longest_category_id = c;
        }
    }

    if(longest_list_size == 0)
        return null;

    int r = new Random().nextInt(longest_list_size);
    return categoryMap.get(c).get(r);
}

Answer 1

Probably faster to have 2 maps:

Foo getItem(Iterator<Foo> it) {
    Map<Integer, Foo> categoryToFoo = new HashMap<Integer, Foo>();
    Map<Integer, Integer> counts = new HashMap<Integer, Integer>();
    int maxCount = 0;
    while(it.hasNext()) {
        Foo foo = it.next();
        int category = foo.getCategory();
        int categoryCount = 1;
        if ( ! categoryToFoo.contains( category ) ) {
            categoryToFoo.put( category, foo );
        }
        else {
            categoryCount = counts.get( category ) + 1;
        }
        counts.put( category, categoryCount );
        if ( categoryCount > maxCount ) {
            maxCount = categoryCount;
        }
    }

    List<Foo> possible = new ArrayList<Foo>()
    for ( Map.Entry entry : counts.entrySet() ) {
        if ( entry.getValue() == maxCount ) {
            possible.add( categoryToFoo.get( entry.getKey() ) );
        }
    }

    return possible.get( new Random().nextInt( possible.size() ) );
}

You could do further optimization in many places, but you get the idea.