Tiling Problem

Difficulty Level : Easy
Last Updated : 19 Dec, 2020

Given a “2 x n” board and tiles of size “2 x 1”, count the number of ways to tile the given board using the 2 x 1 tiles. A tile can either be placed horizontally i.e., as a 1 x 2 tile or vertically i.e., as 2 x 1 tile.

Examples:

Input: n = 4
Output: 3
Explanation:

For a 2 x 4 board, there are 3 ways
All 4 vertical
All 4 horizontal
2 vertical and 2 horizontal
Input: n = 3
Output: 2
Explanation:
We need 2 tiles to tile the board of size 2 x 3.
We can tile the board using following ways
Place all 3 tiles vertically.
Place 1 tile vertically and remaining 2 tiles horizontally.

tilingproblem

Implementation –

Let “count(n)” be the count of ways to place tiles on a “2 x n” grid, we have following two ways to place first tile.
1) If we place first tile vertically, the problem reduces to “count(n-1)”
2) If we place first tile horizontally, we have to place second tile also horizontally. So the problem reduces to “count(n-2)”
Therefore, count(n) can be written as below.

   count(n) = n if n = 1 or n = 2
   count(n) = count(n-1) + count(n-2)

Here’s the code for the above approach:

C++

// C++ program to count the
// no. of ways to place 2*1 size
// tiles in 2*n size board.
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
 
int getNoOfWays(int n)
{
    // Base case
    if (n == 0)
        return 0;
    if (n == 1)
        return 1;
 
    return getNoOfWays(n - 1) + getNoOfWays(n - 2);
}
 
// Driver Function
int main()
{
    cout << getNoOfWays(4) << endl;
    cout << getNoOfWays(3);
    return 0;
}

Output:

3
2

The above recurrence is nothing but Fibonacci Number expression. We can find n’th Fibonacci number in O(Log n) time, see below for all method to find n’th Fibonacci Number.
https://youtu.be/NyICqRtePVs
https://youtu.be/U9ylW7NsHlI
Different methods for n’th Fibonacci Number.
Count the number of ways to tile the floor of size n x m using 1 x m size tiles
This article is contributed by Saurabh Jain. Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above

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