Test results - Codility

Tasks Details

hard

1. MinAbsSum

Given array of integers, find the lowest absolute sum of elements.

100%

Not assessed

For a given array A of N integers and a sequence S of N integers from the set {−1, 1}, we define val(A, S) as follows:

val(A, S) = |sum{ A[i]*S[i] for i = 0..N−1 }|

(Assume that the sum of zero elements equals zero.)

For a given array A, we are looking for such a sequence S that minimizes val(A,S).

Write a function:

int solution(int A[], int N);

that, given an array A of N integers, computes the minimum value of val(A,S) from all possible values of val(A,S) for all possible sequences S of N integers from the set {−1, 1}.

For example, given array:

A[0] = 1 A[1] = 5 A[2] = 2 A[3] = -2

your function should return 0, since for S = [−1, 1, −1, 1], val(A, S) = 0, which is the minimum possible value.

Write an efficient algorithm for the following assumptions:

N is an integer within the range [0..20,000];

each element of array A is an integer within the range [−100..100].

Solution

Programming language used C

Time spent on task 13 minutes

Notes

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