花花酱 LeetCode 1887. Reduction Operations to Make the Array Elements Equal

Given an integer array nums, your goal is to make all elements in nums equal. To complete one operation, follow these steps:

1. Find the largest value in nums. Let its index be i (0-indexed) and its value be largest. If there are multiple elements with the largest value, pick the smallest i.
2. Find the next largest value in nums strictly smaller than largest. Let its value be nextLargest.
3. Reduce nums[i] to nextLargest.

Return the number of operations to make all elements in nums equal.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [5,1,3]
Output: 3
Explanation: It takes 3 operations to make all elements in nums equal:
1. largest = 5 at index 0. nextLargest = 3. Reduce nums[0] to 3. nums = [3,1,3].
2. largest = 3 at index 0. nextLargest = 1. Reduce nums[0] to 1. nums = [1,1,3].
3. largest = 3 at index 2. nextLargest = 1. Reduce nums[2] to 1. nums = [1,1,1].

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1,1,1]
Output: 0
Explanation: All elements in nums are already equal.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [1,1,2,2,3]
Output: 4
Explanation: It takes 4 operations to make all elements in nums equal:
1. largest = 3 at index 4. nextLargest = 2. Reduce nums[4] to 2. nums = [1,1,2,2,2].
2. largest = 2 at index 2. nextLargest = 1. Reduce nums[2] to 1. nums = [1,1,1,2,2].
3. largest = 2 at index 3. nextLargest = 1. Reduce nums[3] to 1. nums = [1,1,1,1,2].
4. largest = 2 at index 4. nextLargest = 1. Reduce nums[4] to 1. nums = [1,1,1,1,1].

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 5 * 104
• 1 <= nums[i] <= 5 * 104

Solution: Math

Input: [5,4,3,2,1]
[5,4,3,2,1] -> [4,4,3,2,1] 5->4, 1 op
[4,4,3,2,1] -> [3,3,3,2,1] 4->3, 2 ops
[3,3,3,2,1] -> [2,2,2,2,1] 3->2, 3 ops
[2,2,2,2,1] -> [1,1,1,1,1] 2->1, 4 ops
total = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10

Sort the array in reverse order, if we find a number at index i that is is smaller than the previous number, we need i ops to make all the numbers before it to become itself.

Time complexity: O(nlogn)
Space complexity: O(1)