Name the Node - 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.

• Q: What is the problem asking for?

  • A: The problem asks to determine which name suggestion received the most votes from a list of suggestions. If there is a tie, return any of the suggestions with the highest votes.

• Q: What are the inputs?

  • A: A list of strings votes where each string is a suggested name.

• Q: What are the outputs?

  • A: A string representing the suggestion with the most votes. If there is a tie, return any of the top suggestions.

P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Use a dictionary to count the votes for each suggestion and then determine the suggestion with the highest vote count.

1. Initialize an empty dictionary `vote_count` to count the votes for each suggestion.
2. Iterate through the `votes` list.
   - For each vote, increment its count in the `vote_count` dictionary.
3. Initialize variables `max_votes` to 0 and `winner` to an empty string.
4. Iterate through the `vote_count` dictionary to find the suggestion with the highest vote count.
   - Update `max_votes` and `winner` whenever a higher vote count is found.
5. Return the `winner`.

I-mplement

def get_winner(votes):
    # Step 1: Initialize a frequency dictionary
    vote_count = {}

    # Step 2: Count the votes
    for vote in votes:
        if vote in vote_count:
            vote_count[vote] += 1
        else:
            vote_count[vote] = 1

    # Step 3: Find the suggestion with the highest count
    max_votes = 0
    winner = ""
    for suggestion, count in vote_count.items():
        if count > max_votes:
            max_votes = count
            winner = suggestion

    return winner