Find Minimum Value to Insert for Positive Prefix Sums in Python

Suppose we have a list of numbers called nums. We have to find the minimum positive value that we can insert at the beginning of nums so that that prefix sums of the resulting list contains numbers that are all larger than 0.

So, if the input is like nums = [3, -6, 4, 3], then the output will be 4, because if we insert 4 to the list then we have [4, 3, -6, 4, 3]. Now the prefix sums are then [4, 7, 1, 5, 8], all are larger than 0.

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

• insert 0 into nums at position 0

• for i in range 1 to size of nums - 1, do

  • nums[i] := nums[i] + nums[i - 1]

• return 1 - minimum of nums

Example

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding

def solve(nums):
   nums.insert(0, 0)
   for i in range(1, len(nums)):
      nums[i] += nums[i - 1]
   return 1 - min(nums)

nums = [3, -6, 4, 3]
print(solve(nums))

Input

[3, -6, 4, 3]

Output

4