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Solution: Most Stones Removed with Same Row or Column

Explore how to apply the Union Find pattern to group stones sharing rows or columns and calculate the maximum number of stones that can be removed. Understand the algorithm's step-by-step approach, including union and find methods, and learn to optimize time complexity to nearly linear in this connectivity problem.

Statement

Given an array of nn 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 nn, where stones[i]=[xi,yi]stones[i] = [x_i, y_i] ...