#functional

Solutions The problem reduces to choosing K consecutive numbers in a sorted list for which the value of D is minimum. Which can be easily done by sorting the given number and calculating D for each group of K consecutive number. Here is a possible C++ Solution: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 #include <iterator> #include <cstdio> #include <vector> #include <iostream> #include <algorithm> #include <climits> using namespace std; int main() { int N, K; cin >> N >> K; vector<int> v(N); copy_n(istream_iterator<int>(cin), N, begin(v)); sort(begin(v), end(v)); auto tail = 0; auto head = K-1; auto unfairness = INT_MAX; while (head<N) { unfairness = min(unfairness, v[head]-v[tail]); tail++; head++; } cout << unfairness; } This results in a combination of zip | map | reduce patterns that in C++ can be written in terms of inner_product: [Read More]

Solutions The brute force solution consists in calculating the absolute difference of each pair and reducing to the minimum value. This takes \(O(N^2)\). We can find better solution, instead, by making a simple observation: the closest two numbers, the lowest their difference. It’s just like calculating the distance between points on the same axis. Indeed, the formula to calculate the distance between two points \(x1, x2\) on the same axis is simply \(|x1-x2|\). [Read More]