Sliding Window Maximum
Last updated: March 3, 2025
Quick Overview
Find the maximum element in each sliding window of size k. Tests monotonic deque technique for optimal performance.
ByteDance
Coding & Algorithms
Software Engineer
ByteDance
March 3, 2025Software Engineer
Coding Round
Coding & Algorithms
Hard
12
4
2,081 solved
Find the maximum element in each sliding window of size k. Tests monotonic deque technique for optimal performance.
Monotonic deque problems are medium priority at ByteDance but appear in senior rounds. Tests understanding of advanced data structure techniques.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Implement using a monotonic decreasing deque
- Achieve O(n) time complexity
- Handle window boundary management correctly
- Explain why the deque maintains the decreasing invariant
- Discuss applications in stream processing
Key Topics to Cover
Monotonic deque
Sliding window
Deque operations
Stream processing
Window maximum
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 you handle this for a stream with unknown length?
- What if you need both min and max in each window?
- How would you parallelize this for a distributed stream?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Problem Analysis
The problem requires us to find the maximum element in each sliding window of size k as we traverse a list of integers. This suggests a pattern where we need to maintain the maximum efficiently as we ...
Approach
- Initialize a deque to store indices of array elements, ensuring the elements are in decreasing order.
- Iterate through each element of the array:
- For each element, remove indices from th...
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