Rank Teams from Ballot Preferences
Last updated: August 9, 2026
Quick Overview
This question asks the candidate to implement a solution that ranks teams based on ballot preferences, where each team receives points based on its ranking in the ballots.
Netapp
August 9, 20261
0
8 solved
This question asks the candidate to implement a solution that ranks teams based on ballot preferences, where each team receives points based on its ranking in the ballots.
This question is typically asked in the onsite coding round to evaluate a candidate's problem-solving and algorithmic skills. The interviewer is looking for the candidate's ability to handle data structures and implement an efficient algorithm to process rankings and compute scores accurately.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Understand the problem requirements clearly and outline the approach.
- Implement a solution that efficiently processes the rankings.
- Handle edge cases such as ties in rankings appropriately.
- Optimize the solution for time complexity, ideally aiming for O(N).
- Provide clear and concise code with appropriate comments.
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
- Can you explain your approach to handling ties in rankings?
- What would you change if the number of teams or ballots increased significantly?
- How would you test your solution for correctness and performance?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Approach
To rank teams based on ballot preferences, we will first create a mapping of each team to its total score based on its rankings in the ballots. Each ballot will provide a list of teams ranked from hig...
Algorithm
- Initialize a dictionary to hold the scores of each team.
- For each ballot, iterate through the teams and assign points based on their index (e.g., 1st place gets 3 points, 2nd place gets 2 points...
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