Link to the Problem
Maximum Points You Can Obtain from Cards
Thought Process
You can’t choose the 2nd element from the front unless you have chosen the first one. Similarly, you can’t choose the 2nd element from the back unless you have chosen the last one already. So in general, you can not directly select some number from the array at random. You will have to select all the numbers before or after that element in order to select that number. This makes the problem easy.
You want to choose a total of K
numbers. There are limited number of ways in which you can choose those numbers given the constraints. One way is to choose all K
numbers from the front and no number from the back. Another way is to choose K-1
numbers from the front and 1
number from the back. Similarly, K-2
number from the front and 2
from the back, and so on. Finally, no numbers from the front and K
numbers from the back. At the end simply find the best way.

Algorithm
- Find cumulative sum from the front to every index
i
. - Find cumulative sum from the back to every index
i
. - If you choose
i
elements from front, you will need to choosek-i
elements from behind.
Sum of firsti
elements =cumulativeSumFromFront[i]
,
Sum of last(k-i)
elements =cumulativeSumFromBehind[K-i]
.
So points obtained when choosingi
elements from the front =cumulativeSumFromFront[i] + cumulativeSumFromBehind[K-i]
. - Repeat the Step 3 for all
i
ranging from0
toK
. - Return the maximum value of points reached.
Code
class Solution { | |
public: | |
int maxScore(vector<int>& cardPoints, int k) { | |
int n = cardPoints.size(); | |
vector<int> cumulativeSumFront(n+1, 0); // For easier indexing, add an extra element. | |
vector<int> cumulativeSumBack(n+1, 0); // For easier indexing, add an extra element. | |
for (int i=0; i<n; i++) { | |
cumulativeSumFront[i+1] = cumulativeSumFront[i] + cardPoints[i]; | |
} | |
for (int i=n-1; i>=0; i--) { | |
cumulativeSumBack[i] = cumulativeSumBack[i+1] + cardPoints[i]; | |
} | |
// Reversing is optional. I reversed it so that it would be easy | |
// to access sum of last (k-i) elements by just indexing at [k-i] | |
// Otherwise, I would have had to index it at [n-k+i] which would | |
// have made it difficult to read. | |
reverse(cumulativeSumBack.begin(), cumulativeSumBack.end()); | |
int answer = 0; | |
for(int i=0; i<=k; i++) { | |
answer = max(answer, | |
cumulativeSumFront[i] // Sum of 'i' cards from the front. | |
+ cumulativeSumBack[k-i]); // Sum of 'k-i' cards from the back. | |
} | |
return answer; | |
} | |
}; |
Another Way to visualize this is as a sliding window.

Is there anything that is still unclear? Let me know in the comments and I can elaborate further.
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