Find kth largest element in graph
Last updated: July 3, 2025
Quick Overview
Given a directed graph represented as an adjacency list, write a function to find the kth largest element from the nodes based on their values. The function should take the graph and an integer k as input and return the kth largest value among the nodes, or -1 if k exceeds the number of nodes in the graph.
Vercel
July 3, 202545
11
2,003 solved
Given a directed graph represented as an adjacency list, write a function to find the kth largest element from the nodes based on their values. The function should take the graph and an integer k as input and return the kth largest value among the nodes, or -1 if k exceeds the number of nodes in the graph.
Vercel uses this problem in the Onsite to evaluate your algorithmic thinking. They expect you to discuss multiple approaches, analyze trade-offs between them, and implement the optimal solution with clean, readable code.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Quickly identify the optimal approach and its theoretical basis
- Handle complex algorithm design with multiple interacting components
- Write concise, elegant code under time pressure
- Prove correctness of your approach and discuss alternative solutions
- Optimize beyond the obvious: discuss constant factor improvements
- Address follow-up variations and explain how the solution generalizes
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How would your solution change if the input was sorted?
- What is the worst-case input for your solution?
- Can you solve this iteratively instead of recursively (or vice versa)?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Analysis
To solve the problem of finding the kth largest element in a directed graph represented as an adjacency list, we can recognize that this is primarily a sorting problem. The directed graph is given as ...
Approach
- Graph Traversal: We will traverse the graph starting from each node to gather all node values. Since it's a directed graph, we will use Depth First Search (DFS) or Breadth First Search (BFS) to...
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