Mountain Peak - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

Unit 2 Session 1 (Click for link to problem statements)

U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

• Can there be multiple peaks in the mountain list?
  • No. By our definition of mountain list, there will only ever be one peak.
• What if the list is empty?
  • The list will always have at least 3 elements.

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Loop through each middle element and compare it to the element after. If it's larger than the next element, we've found the peak.

1) Loop through the middle elements of the list (skip the beginning/end)
2) Compare each element to the next element 
  a) If the next element is bigger, keep looking
  b) If the next element is smaller, return the current element

I-mplement

def peak_index_in_mountain_list(lst):
    for i in range(1, len(lst) - 1):
        if lst[i] > lst[i + 1]:
            return i