LintCode 1859: Minimum Amplitude

1859. Minimum Amplitude

Given an array A consisting of N integers. In one move, we can choose any element in this array and replace it with any value.
The amplitude of an array is the difference between the largest and the smallest values it contains.
Return the smallest amplitude of array A that we can achieve by performing at most three moves

Example
Example 1
Input:
A = [-9, 8, -1]
Output: 0
Explanation: We can replace -9 and 8 with -1 so that all element are equal to -1, and then the amplitude is 0
Example 2:
Input:
A = [14, 10, 5, 1, 0]
Output: 1
Explanation: To achieve an amplitude of 1, we can replace 14, 10 and 5 with 1 or 0.
Example 3:
Input:
A = [11, 0, -6, -1, -3, 5]
Output: 3
Explanation: This can be achieved by replacing 11, -6 and 5 with three values of -2.
Notice
N is an integer within the range: [2, 10000]
each element of array A is an integer within the range: [-50, 50]

解法1：

class Solution {
public:
    /**
     * @param A: a list of integer
     * @return: Return the smallest amplitude
     */
    int MinimumAmplitude(vector<int> &A) {
        int n = A.size();
        if (n <= 4) return 0;
        sort(A.begin(), A.end());
        
        int option1 = A[n - 4] - A[0];
        int option2 = A[n - 3] - A[1];
        int option3 = A[n - 2] - A[2];
        int option4 = A[n - 1] - A[3];
        
        return min(option1, min(option2, min(option3, option4)));
    }
};

解法2：

class Solution {
public:
    /**
     * @param A: a list of integer
     * @return: Return the smallest amplitude
     */
    int MinimumAmplitude(vector<int> &A) {
        // write your code here
        int n = A.size();
        if(n <= 4) return 0;

        sort(A.begin(), A.end());
        
        int mmin = INT_MAX;
        for(int i = 0;i < 4;i++){
            mmin = min(mmin, A[n - 3 + i - 1] - A[i]);
        } 
        return mmin;
    }
};