Solution: Most Stones Removed with Same Row or Column
Explore how to solve the problem of removing the maximum number of stones from a 2D plane using the Union Find pattern. Understand grouping stones by shared rows or columns into connected components, then calculate removable stones efficiently. This lesson helps you optimize solutions with union by rank and path compression techniques, improving time complexity to near linear.
Statement
Given an array of stones in a two-dimensional plane, where each stone is represented by a pair of x and y coordinates, find the maximum number of stones we can remove with the following condition:
A stone can be removed if it shares either the same row or the same column with another stone that has not been removed so far.
Stones are provided as an array, stones, of length , where ...