Check If a Given Matrix Is Sparse or Not in C++

Here we will see how to check whether a matrix is sparse or not. A sparse matrix is a matrix where most of the elements are 0. The definition of a sparse matrix is, if the 2/3rd of the elements are 0, then the matrix is denoted as a sparse matrix. Here is the example of a sparse matrix.

To check it, we will count the number of 0s in the matrix, then if that count is greater than 2/3rd of the total elements, then this is sparse.

Example

 Live Demo

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
#define MAX 5
using namespace std;
bool isSparseMatrix(int arr[][MAX], int m, int n) {
   int counter = 0;
   for (int i = 0; i < m; i++)
   for (int j = 0; j <n; j++)
   if (arr[i][j] == 0)
      counter++;
   return (counter > (2*(m * n) / 3));
}
int main() {
   int matrix[MAX][MAX] = {
      {0, 2, 0, 0, 0},
      {8, 0, 0, 0, 0},
      {0, 3, 0, 0, 0},
      {0, 9, 0, 3, 0},
      {0, 0, 0, 0, 4}
   };
   if(isSparseMatrix(matrix, MAX, MAX)){
      cout << "This is sparse matrix";
   } else {
      cout << "This is not sparse matrix";
   }
}

Output

This is sparse matrix