Katkat
Back

Solve stock and banana problems

AppleMachine Learning Engineer · Onsite
MediumMachine Learning EngineerOnsiteCoding & Algorithms

Last updated

This question evaluates algorithmic problem-solving skills related to array processing, optimization under constraints, and reasoning about performance trade-offs by presenting a maximum single-transaction stock profit problem and a minimum banana-eating speed problem.

Solve both coding problems below.

  1. Maximum single-transaction stock profit: Given an array prices where prices[i] is the stock price on day i, return the maximum profit obtainable by choosing one day to buy and a later day to sell. If no profit is possible, return 0.

  2. Minimum banana-eating speed: Given an array piles where piles[i] is the number of bananas in pile i, and an integer h representing the total number of hours available, find the minimum integer eating speed k such that a monkey can finish all piles within h hours. In one hour, the monkey chooses one pile and eats up to k bananas from that pile.

For each problem, explain your algorithm and analyze time and space complexity.