Solution: Find K Pairs with Smallest Sums

Explore how to find the k pairs with the smallest sums from two sorted arrays using an optimized k-way merge approach. Understand the use of a min heap to efficiently select pairs, improving time complexity over the naive method. This lesson guides you through algorithm steps and complexity analysis.

We'll cover the following...

Statement
Solution

Statement

You are given two integer arrays, list1 and list2, sorted in non-decreasing order, and an integer, k.

A pair $(u, \space v)$ is defined as one element $u$ chosen from list1 and one element $v$ chosen from list2.

Your task is to return the k pairs $(u1, \space v1), (u2, \space v2), ..., (uk, \space vk)$ whose sums $u1 + v1, u2 + v2, ..., uk + vk$ are the smallest among all possible such pairs.