PIQ03: Find Majority Element in an Array

Problem Statement

Given an array of size n, find the element which occurs more than n/2 times. This element is called Majority Element. If not found, return null.

Approach 1: Use a counter

def majority_element1(arr):
    """
    Time complexity: O(n).
    Space complexity: O(n).
    """
    if not arr:
        return None

    from collections import Counter

    cnt = Counter(arr)
    most_common_element, count = cnt.most_common(1)[0]
    if count > (len(arr) >> 1):
        return most_common_element
    else:
        return None

The space complexity of the proposed algorithm can be further optimised to O(1)。

Approach 2: Boyer–Moore majority vote algorithm

Algorithm Link

def majority_element(arr):
    """
    Time complexity: O(n).
    Space complexity: O(1).
    """
    if not arr:
        return None

    candidate, counter = arr[0], 0
    for ele in arr:
        if counter == 0:
            candidate, counter = ele, 1
        else:
            if candidate == ele:
                counter += 1
            else:
                counter -= 1

    if counter == 0:
        return None

    counter = 0
    for ele in arr:
        counter += (ele == candidate)
    if counter > (len(arr) >> 1):
        return candidate
    else:
        return None