Leetcode – Most Visited Sector in a Circular Track Solution

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The “Most Visited Sector in a Circular Track” problem is a classic problem featured on Leetcode that falls under the category of array manipulation and basic algorithmic design. This problem not only assesses your understanding of arrays but also evaluates your ability to think in terms of circular data structures. This article provides a comprehensive guide to tackling this problem, offering multiple solutions and analyzing them for time and space complexity.

Problem Statement

The problem asks us to determine the most visited sectors in a circular race track consisting of n sectors numbered from 1 to n. A runner starts at sector 1 and runs the track, visiting sectors in the given order. The task is to return the sectors that are most visited in ascending order.

Constraints:

  • 2 <= n <= 100
  • 1 <= rounds.length <= 100
  • 1 <= rounds[i] <= n
  • rounds[i] != rounds[i + 1] for 0 <= i < rounds.length - 1

Example

For n = 4, and rounds = [1, 3, 1, 2], the most visited sectors would be [1, 2].

Approach 1: Brute-Force Counting

Algorithm

  1. Create an array count of size n+1 to keep track of the number of visits for each sector.
  2. Traverse the rounds array, updating the count for each sector visited.
  3. Find the maximum count and filter out sectors with that count.

Python Implementation

def mostVisited(n, rounds):
    count = [0] * (n + 1)
    
    # Initialize the first sector
    count[rounds[0]] = 1
    cur = rounds[0]
    
    # Count each sector visited
    for i in range(1, len(rounds)):
        while cur != rounds[i]:
            cur = cur + 1 if cur < n else 1
            count[cur] += 1
            
    # Find the maximum count
    max_count = max(count)
    
    # Return sectors with the maximum count
    return [i for i, c in enumerate(count) if c == max_count]

Time Complexity

The time complexity is O(n×m), where n is the number of sectors and m is the length of the rounds array.

Space Complexity

The space complexity is O(n).

Approach 2: Optimized Counting

Algorithm

  1. Realize that visiting sector i to sector j consecutively means all the sectors in between are also visited once.
  2. Use this observation to update the count array more efficiently.

Python Implementation

def mostVisited(n, rounds):
    count = [0] * (n + 1)
    
    # Initialize the first sector
    cur = rounds[0]
    count[cur] = 1
    
    # Count each sector visited in an optimized way
    for i in range(1, len(rounds)):
        next_sector = rounds[i]
        while cur != next_sector:
            cur = cur % n + 1  # Go to the next sector in a circular manner
            count[cur] += 1
    
    # Handle the last sector separately
    count[rounds[-1]] += 1

    # Find the maximum count
    max_count = max(count)
    
    # Return sectors with the maximum count
    return [i for i, c in enumerate(count) if c == max_count]

Time Complexity

The time complexity is O(m).

Space Complexity

The space complexity is O(n).

Comparison of Approaches

Conclusion

The “Most Visited Sector in a Circular Track” problem serves as a great exercise for practicing array manipulations and understanding circular data structures. Both approaches discussed in this article have their own merits. The brute-force method is easier to implement but comes at the cost of efficiency. On the other hand, the optimized approach is fast but requires a deeper understanding of the problem.

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