Heap
This page provides links to solutions that use the Deque approach.
Overview
A heap is a specialized tree-based data structure that satisfies the heap property. It's commonly implemented as a binary tree where each node's value is less than or equal to (in a min-heap) or greater than or equal to (in a max-heap) the values of its children. In a max-heap, the maximum value is at the root node, and in a min-heap, the minimum value is at the root.
How to Spot These Problems
You can identify heap problems if the problem requires you to:
- Efficiently retrieve the minimum or maximum element from a collection.
- Solve optimization problems, such as finding the k-th largest or smallest element in an array.