root8950's blog

By root8950, history, 9 years ago, In English

I am unable to find approach to this question. https://www.codechef.com/IOPC2016/problems/IOPC16Q The contest is over and there is no editorial. Anybody having idea how to solve it?

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9 years ago, # |
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Tutorial in Chinese and the code here

I'll do my best to explain in English.

First we know if we only have to choose a number x , the answer will be the median.
The only property we need to know for this problem is the best choice of x and y must separate the array into two consecutive part: 1 ~ M for x and M+1 ~ n for y.
What we should do is enumerate M and calculate the cost of two independent parts in O(1) for each M.

Hope it helps :).