Suppose we have a lit of numbers called nums, and have another value k. If we remove k elements from nums, then find the minimum of (maximum of nums - minimum of nums).
So, if the input is like nums = [4, 10, 3, 2, 8, 9] k = 3, then the output will be 2, because if we remove 10, 8 and 9 then maximum is 4, minimum is 2 so difference is 2.
To solve this, we will follow these steps −
sort the list nums
p := size of nums - k
m := (last element of nums) - nums[0]
for i in range 0 to size of nums - p, do
if nums[i + p - 1] - nums[i] < m, then
m := nums[i + p - 1] - nums[i]
return m
Example
Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding
def solve(nums, k):
nums = sorted(nums)
p = len(nums) - k
m = nums[-1] - nums[0]
for i in range(0, len(nums) - p + 1):
if nums[i + p - 1] - nums[i] < m:
m = nums[i + p - 1] - nums[i]
return m
nums = [10, 4, 3, 2, 9, 8]
k = 3
print(solve(nums, k))Input
[10, 4, 3, 2, 9, 8], 3
Output
2