This series answers coding interview questions from the Coding Interview Prep collection at freeCodeCamp. You can find more with the interview questions tag.
This is an algorithmic problem from the Project Euler collection.
Create a set of fibonacci numbers that are less than or equal to n and return the sum of only the even numbers. Fibonacci adds the current number to the prior number in the sequence. So a sequence would be 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.... In that sequence, only 2 and 8 are even, so the answer would be 10.
Solution Explained
To derive the fibonacci numbers below n requires 4 variables, 3 that need to be function-scoped (existing outside the loop iteration scope), one that can be loop-iteration-scoped.
First declare 3 variables, one to hold the result, one equal to one, one equal to 0.
Then start a while loop that will keep running until the next fibonacci number will be greater than n.
At the end of the iteration, last must equal the starting value (fib) that started the iteration, so the starting value is assigned to hold. Add fib and last to get the next fibonacci value, then assign the initial value to last.
Finally, use fib mod 2 === 0 to test for it being an even number, and if so, add it to the result.
When done, return the result.
Notes
The initial thought hurdle I had to overcome was where to make last directly equal fib. Two iterations of the code suffered from that logic error and failed the tests.
I realized there was nowhere in this that wouldn’t cause a binary progression (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…) instead of a fibonacci one (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…). Simply put, last had to equal fib, but only the value of fib before last had been added to it. Adding hold solved that.
iteration 1:
start: hold = 1, fib = 1, last = 0
end: fib = 1, last = 1
iteration 2:
start: hold = 1, fib = 1, last = 1
end: fib = 2, last = 1
iteration 3:
start: hold = 2, fib = 2, last = 1
end: fib = 3, last = 2
iteration 4:
start: hold = 3, fib = 3, last = 2
end: fib = 5, last = 3
...
Solution
function fiboEvenSum(n) {
let result = 0, fib = 1, last = 0;
while (fib + last <= n) {
let hold = fib;
fib = fib + last;
last = hold;
if(fib % 2 === 0) result += fib;
}
return result;
}