Suppose we have an array called nums. We can change one element from this array to any value in one move. We have to find the minimum difference between the largest and smallest value of nums after preforming at most 3 moves.
So, if the input is like nums = [3,7,2,12,16], then the output will be 1 because we can make given array to [1,1,0,1,1], so the maximum is 1 and minimum is 0, so the difference is 1.
To solve this, we will follow these steps −
if size of nums <= 4, then
return 0
sort the list nums
ans := infinity
for i in range 0 to 3, do
mi := nums[i]
ma := nums[length of nums -(3-i+1)]
ans := minimum of ma-mi and ans
return ans
Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −
Example
def solve(nums):
if len(nums) <= 4:
return 0
nums.sort()
ans = float("inf")
for i in range(4):
mi = nums[i]
ma = nums[-(3-i+1)]
ans = min(ma-mi,ans)
return ans
nums = [3,7,2,12,16]
print(solve(nums))Input
[3,7,2,12,16]
Output
1