Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:
What kind of questions should I not ask here?
Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!
Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …
Edit:
Now using binary search on closest values along with memoization, Needs testing, but the idea is straightforward. This still relies on the fact that even and odd are increasing sequences.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# inspired by your code
memo = {'even': {0: 1, 2: 2}, 'odd': {1: 1}}
def f(k...
