Sorting and sliding window approach

Good morning folks, easy LC problem today, requiring a sorting (NLogN) and sliding window (N). Problem and solution down below - cheers, ACC.

Minimum Difference Between Highest and Lowest of K Scores - LeetCode

1984. Minimum Difference Between Highest and Lowest of K Scores

Easy

You are given a 0-indexed integer array nums, where nums[i] represents the score of the ith student. You are also given an integer k.

Pick the scores of any k students from the array so that the difference between the highest and the lowest of the k scores is minimized.

Return the minimum possible difference.

 

Example 1:

Input: nums = [90], k = 1
Output: 0
Explanation: There is one way to pick score(s) of one student:
- [90]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 90 - 90 = 0.
The minimum possible difference is 0.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [9,4,1,7], k = 2
Output: 2
Explanation: There are six ways to pick score(s) of two students:
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 9 - 4 = 5.
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 9 - 1 = 8.
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 9 - 7 = 2.
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 4 - 1 = 3.
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 7 - 4 = 3.
- [9,4,1,7]. The difference between the highest and lowest score is 7 - 1 = 6.
The minimum possible difference is 2.

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= k <= nums.length <= 1000
• 0 <= nums[i] <= 105

Accepted

7,358

Submissions

13,525

public int MinimumDifference(int[] nums, int k)
{
    Array.Sort(nums);

    int min = Int32.MaxValue;
    for (int i = 0; i < nums.Length; i++)
    {
        if (i - k + 1 >= 0)
        {
            min = Math.Min(min, nums[i] - nums[i - k + 1]);
        }
    }

    return min;
}