Minimum Difference Between Largest and Smallest Value in Three Moves

arraygreedysorting

Problem Statement

You are given an integer array nums .

In one move, you can choose one element of nums and change it to any value .

Return the minimum difference between the largest and smallest value of nums after performing at most three moves .

Examples

Example 1

Input: nums = [5,3,2,4]
Output: 0
We can make at most 3 moves.
In the first move, change 2 to 3. nums becomes [5,3,3,4].
In the second move, change 4 to 3. nums becomes [5,3,3,3].
In the third move, change 5 to 3. nums becomes [3,3,3,3].
After performing 3 moves, the difference between the minimum and maximum is 3 - 3 = 0.

Example 2

Input: nums = [1,5,0,10,14]
Output: 1
We can make at most 3 moves.
In the first move, change 5 to 0. nums becomes [1,0,0,10,14].
In the second move, change 10 to 0. nums becomes [1,0,0,0,14].
In the third move, change 14 to 1. nums becomes [1,0,0,0,1].
After performing 3 moves, the difference between the minimum and maximum is 1 - 0 = 1.
It can be shown that there is no way to make the difference 0 in 3 moves.

Example 3

Input: nums = [3,100,20]
Output: 0
We can make at most 3 moves.
In the first move, change 100 to 7. nums becomes [3,7,20].
In the second move, change 20 to 7. nums becomes [3,7,7].
In the third move, change 3 to 7. nums becomes [7,7,7].
After performing 3 moves, the difference between the minimum and maximum is 7 - 7 = 0.

Constraints

1 <= nums.length <= 10 ^5

-10 ^9 <= nums[i] <= 10 ^9

🤔

Medium

Difficulty

Topic Info

ModuleDSA

CategoryArray

Sub-topicGreedy