Compute maximum beauty of a string
Bank of AmericaData Scientist · Online Assessment
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This question evaluates skills in string manipulation, frequency analysis, and optimization of weighted sums, focusing on assigning distinct values to characters to maximize an aggregate metric.
Given a string s, define the beauty of each letter a–z as a distinct integer between 1 and 26, case-insensitive. The beauty of a string is the sum over letters of (letter beauty × its frequency). Ignore punctuation and spaces. For each input line containing a string, compute and print the maximum possible beauty by choosing an assignment of beauties to letters that maximizes the sum. Examples: Input "ABbCCC" → 152; Input "Ignore punctuation, please :)" → 491.
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