More Positives or Negatives

Easy

A weather station logged the night's temperatures into the array readings, which is already sorted in non-decreasing order. Count how many values are positive and how many are negative, and return the larger of the two counts. Zero is neither positive nor negative. A single O(n) pass is the obvious route. Can you use the fact that the array is sorted to get O(log n)?

Example 1

readings=[-7, -4, 0, 0, 3] → 2

There are two negative readings (-7 and -4) and one positive (3); zeros do not count. The answer is 2.

Example 2

readings=[-1, 2, 2, 8, 15] → 4

Four positives against one negative, so the answer is 4.

Example 3

readings=[0, 0, 0] → 0

Only zeros: no positives and no negatives, so the answer is 0.

Constraints

1 ≤ len(readings) ≤ 2000
-2000 ≤ readings[i] ≤ 2000
readings is sorted in non-decreasing order

Have you seen this problem in a real interview?

Solved by0

Tried by0

Submissions0

Acceptance—

Topics

Array Binary Search Counting

Similar problems

Common to Three Sorted Arrays Easy A Value Shared by Every Row Medium Cleanup by Unequal Pairs Medium Spells Without Neighbors Medium Pair GCDs by Sorted Position Hard

Input

readings=[-7, -4, 0, 0, 3]

Expected

Run checks the first 3 tests in your browser. Submit checks all 97 tests on the server, hidden ones included.