2437. Maximum Number of Groups Entering a Competition

Medium
Array
Math
Binary Search
Greedy

Description

You are given a positive integer array grades which represents the grades of students in a university. You would like to enter all these students into a competition in ordered non-empty groups, such that the ordering meets the following conditions:

  • The sum of the grades of students in the ith group is less than the sum of the grades of students in the (i + 1)th group, for all groups (except the last).
  • The total number of students in the ith group is less than the total number of students in the (i + 1)th group, for all groups (except the last).

Return the maximum number of groups that can be formed.

 

Example 1:

Input: grades = [10,6,12,7,3,5]
Output: 3
Explanation: The following is a possible way to form 3 groups of students:
- 1st group has the students with grades = [12]. Sum of grades: 12. Student count: 1
- 2nd group has the students with grades = [6,7]. Sum of grades: 6 + 7 = 13. Student count: 2
- 3rd group has the students with grades = [10,3,5]. Sum of grades: 10 + 3 + 5 = 18. Student count: 3
It can be shown that it is not possible to form more than 3 groups.

Example 2:

Input: grades = [8,8]
Output: 1
Explanation: We can only form 1 group, since forming 2 groups would lead to an equal number of students in both groups.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= grades.length <= 105
  • 1 <= grades[i] <= 105

Hints

Hint 1
Would it be easier to place the students into valid groups after sorting them based on their grades in ascending order?
Hint 2
Notice that, after sorting, we can separate them into groups of sizes 1, 2, 3, and so on.
Hint 3
If the last group is invalid, we can merge it with the previous group.
Hint 4
This creates the maximum number of groups because we always greedily form the smallest possible group.

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