Minimum Cuts to Divide a Circle

We can define the rules more succinctly:

  • If ( n = 1 ), there’s no need to cut, so we return 0.
  • If ( n ) is odd, we need to cut one by one, so we return ( n ).
  • If ( n ) is even, we can cut on the diameter, effectively reducing the number of required cuts in half, so we return ( n / 2 ).

Here’s the code to reflect these rules:

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class Solution:
    def numberOfCuts(self, n: int) -> int:
        if n == 1:
            return 0
        elif n % 2 == 0:
            return n // 2
        else:
            return n

This code will efficiently calculate the minimum number of cuts needed to divide the circle into ( n ) equal slices.