Sum of difference of a number to an array of numbers - c++

Question

This is my problem.
Given an array of integers and another integer k, find the sum of differences of each element of the array and k.
For example if the array is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and k is 3
Sum of difference
= abs(2 - 3) + abs(4-3) + abs(6 - 3) + abs(8 - 3) + abs(10 - 3)
= 1 + 1 + 3 + 5 + 7
= 17
The array remains the same throughout and can contain up to 100000 elements and there will be 100000 different values of k to be tested. k may or may not be an element of the array. This has to be done within 1s or about 100M operations. How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

You can run multiple queries for sums of absolute differences in O(log N) if you add a preprocessing step which costs O(N * log N).
Sort the array, then for each item in the array store the sum of all numbers that are smaller than or equal to the corresponding item. This can be done in O(N * log N) Now you have a pair of arrays that look like this:
2 4 6 8 10 // <<== Original data
2 6 12 20 30 // <<== Partial sums
In addition, store the total T of all numbers in the array.
Now you can get sums of absolute differences by running a binary search on the original array, and using the sums from the partial sums array to compute the answer: subtract the sum of all numbers to the left of the target k from the count of numbers to the left of the target times k, then subtract the count times k from the sum to the right of the number, and add the two numbers together. The partial sum of the numbers to the right of the number can be computed by subtracting the partial sum on the left from the total T.
For k=3 binary search gets you to position 1.
Partial sum on the left is 2
Count of items on the left is 1
Partial sum on the right is (30-2)=28
Count of items on the right is 4
You compute (1*3-2) + (28-4*3) = 1 + 16 = 17

Answer 2

First sort the array and then compute an array that stores the sum of the prefixes of the resulting sorted array. Let's denote this array p, you can compute p in linear time so that p[i] = a[0] + a[1] + ... a[i]. Now having this array you can answer with constant complexity the question what is the sum of elements a[x] + a[x+1] + .... +a[y](i.e. with indices x to y). To do that you simply compute p[y] - p[x-1](Take special care when x is 1).
Now to answer a query of the type what is the sum of absolute differences with k, we will split the problem in two parts - what is the sum of the numbers greater than k and the numbers smaller than k. In order to compute these, perform a binary search to find the position of k in the sorted a(denote that idx), and compute the sum of the values in a before idx(denote that s) and after idx(denote that S). Now the sum of absolute differences with k is idx * k - s + S - (a.length - idx)* k. This of course is pseudo code and what I mean by a.length is the number of elements in a.
After performing a linearithmic precomputation, you will be able to answer a query with O(log(n)). Please note this approach only makes sense if you plan to perform multiple queries. If you are only going to perform a single query, you can not possibly go faster than O(n).

Answer 3

Just implementing dasblinkenlight's solution in "contest C++":
It does exactly as he says. Reads the values, sorts them, stores the accumulated sum in V[i].second, but here V[i] is the acumulated sum until i-1 (to simplify the algorithm). It also stores a sentinel in V[n] for cases when the query is greater than max(V).
Then, for each query, binary search for the value. In this case V[a].second is the sum of values lesser than query, V[n].second-V[a].second is the sum of values greater than it.
#include<iostream>
#include<algorithm>
#define pii pair<int, int>
using namespace std;
pii V[100001];
int main() {
int n;
while(cin >> n) {
for(int i=0; i<n; i++)
cin >> V[i].first;
sort(V, V+n);
V[0].second = 0;
for(int i=1; i<=n; i++)
V[i].second = V[i-1].first + V[i-1].second;
int k; cin >> k;
for(int i=0; i<k; i++) {
int query; cin >> query;
pii* res = upper_bound(V, V+n, pii(query, 0));
int a = res-V, b=n-(res-V);
int left = query*a-V[a].second;
int right = V[n].second-V[a].second-query*b;
cout << left+right << endl;
}
}
}
It assumes a file with a format like this:
5
10 2 8 4 6
2
3 5
Then, for each query, it answers like this:
17
13