Introduction to Top K Elements
Explore the Top K Elements pattern to efficiently identify a subset of largest, smallest, or most frequent elements in an unsorted list. Learn how to use min and max heaps in C++ to maintain and retrieve these elements, improving time complexity from full sorting to O(n log k). Understand applications of this pattern in real-world problems like ride-sharing, finance, and social media analysis, and practice implementing it with clear examples.
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About the pattern
The top k elements pattern is an important technique in coding that helps us efficiently find a specific number of elements, known as , from a set of data. This is particularly useful when we’re tasked with identifying the largest, smallest, or most/least frequent elements within an unsorted collection.
To solve tasks like these, one might think to sort the entire collection first, which takes time, and then select the top k elements, taking additional ...