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Find the Kth Largest in Two Sorted Arrays

GleanSoftware Engineer · Technical Screen
MediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenCoding & Algorithms

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This question evaluates proficiency with array manipulation and selection algorithms, specifically understanding order statistics and working with two sorted sequences.

You are given two arrays sorted in ascending order and an integer k. Return the kth largest element among all elements from both arrays combined.

Count duplicates as separate elements.

Example:

  • a = [0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13]
  • b = [1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12]
  • k = 3

The combined elements in descending order begin with 13, 12, 11, 10, ..., so the answer is 11.