We have given an array of elements, and we have to make them all equal by incrementing the elements by 1. We are allowed to increment n - 1 element at each step. Our goal is to calculate the total number of operations required to make all the array elements equal.
For example, if you take the list [1, 2, 3], it took three operations to make all the elements equal. One solution to the problem is. Find the most significant number at each step and increment the rest of the elements by 1. Let's write the code.
def main(): # intializing the array arr = [1, 2, 3] # initializing operations count to 0 no_of_operations = 0 flag = 0 # performing the operations on array to make them equal while not are_equal(arr): flag = 1 # finding the maximum from the list maximum = max(arr) # incrementing all the elements except maximum for i in range(len(arr)): if arr[i] != maximum: arr[i] += 1 # incrementing the operations count by 1 no_of_operations += 1 print(no_of_operations) if flag == 0 else print(no_of_operations + 1) # checking whether all the elements are equal or not def are_equal(arr): global no_of_operations for i in range(len(arr) - 1): if arr[i] != arr[i + 1]: return False return True if __name__ == '__main__': main()
If you run the above program, you will get the following results.
3
The above method takes more time to compute for large arrays. We can find the number of operations by finding the sum and the smallest element of the array.
See the code below.
# initializing an array arr = [1, 2, 3] # length length = len(arr) # sum of element fo the array elements_sum = sum(arr) # smallest among all the elements smallest = min(arr) # calculating the number of operations print(elements_sum - (length * smallest))
If you run the above code, you will get the following results.
3
The second method that we discussed is easier and takes less time compared to the first method. If you have any doubts in the tutorial, mention them in the comment section.