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Program to find largest product of three unique items in Python

Suppose we have a list of numbers called nums, we have to find the largest product of three unique elements.

So, if the input is like nums = [6, 1, 2, 4, -3, -4], then the output will be 72, as we can multiply (- 3) * (-4) * 6 = 72.

To solve this, we will follow these steps −

  • sort the list nums

  • n := size of nums

  • maxScore := -inf

  • maxScore := maximum of maxScore and (nums[0] * nums[1] * nums[n - 1])

  • maxScore := maximum of maxScore and (nums[n - 3] * nums[n - 2] * nums[n - 1])

  • return maxScore

Example

Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding

def solve(nums):
   nums.sort()
   n = len(nums)
   maxScore = -10000
   maxScore = max(maxScore, nums[0] * nums[1] * nums[n - 1])
   maxScore = max(maxScore, nums[n - 3] * nums[n - 2] * nums[n - 1])
   return maxScore

nums = [6, 1, 2, 4, -3, -4]
print(solve(nums))

Input

[6, 1, 2, 4, -3, -4]

Output

72