Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions
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Solution: Top 'K' Numbers

Problem Statement

Given an unsorted array of numbers, find the ‘K’ largest numbers in it.

Example 1:

Input: [3, 1, 5, 12, 2, 11], K = 3
Output: [5, 12, 11]

Example 2:

Input: [5, 12, 11, -1, 12], K = 3
Output: [12, 11, 12]

Constraints:

  • 1 <= nums.length <= 10<sup>5</sup>
  • -10<sup>5</sup> <= nums[i] <= 10<sup>5</sup>
  • k is in the range [1, the number of unique elements in the array].
  • It is guaranteed that the answer is unique.

Solution

A brute force solution could be to sort the array and return the largest K numbers

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