712207. Aggressive Cows
Medium
Aggressive Cows
Slug: aggressive-cows
Difficulty: Medium
Id: 712207
Topic Tags: Binary Search, Algorithms
Company Tags: None
Summary
The Aggressive Cows problem involves determining the maximum number of cows that can be placed in a field such that no two aggressive cows are placed together. The input consists of an array of integers representing the positions where the cows can be placed.
Detailed Explanation
To solve this problem, we need to sort the cow positions first and then iterate through the sorted array to find the maximum number of non-aggressive cow pairs.
Here's a step-by-step breakdown:
- Sort the input array in ascending order.
- Initialize two variables
countandmaxCountto store the current count and maximum count of non-aggressive cows, respectively. - Iterate through the sorted array. For each pair of positions
(i, i+1), check if the distance between them is greater than or equal to2(since aggressive cows must be separated by at least one space). If the condition is met, incrementcount. - Update
maxCountwith the maximum value it has seen so far. - Return
maxCountas the result.
Time complexity: O(n log n) due to sorting, where n is the number of cow positions. Space complexity: O(1), as we only use a constant amount of space.
Optimized Solutions
Java
public class AggressiveCows {
public static int aggressiveCows(int[] position) {
Arrays.sort(position);
int count = 0;
int maxCount = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < position.length; i++) {
if (position[i] - position[i-1] >= 2) {
count++;
} else {
count = 0;
}
maxCount = Math.max(maxCount, count);
}
return maxCount;
}
}