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How to check if a given number target is a majority element?.
Find the frequency of target and compare it to the length of the array.
You can find the frequency of an element using Binary Search since the array is sorted.
Using Binary Search, find the first and last occurrences of A. Then just calculate the difference between the indexes of these occurrences.
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Binary search works efficiently because the array is already sorted. This allows us to quickly locate the first occurrence of the target in O(log n) time instead of scanning the entire array.
Yes, variations of majority element problems appear in coding interviews, especially when testing knowledge of binary search and array properties. Interviewers often expect candidates to exploit the sorted structure for an optimized solution.
The primary data structure used is a sorted array. The algorithm relies on the ordered nature of the array to perform binary search and verify whether the element appears more than n/2 times.
The optimal approach uses binary search to locate the first occurrence of the target in the sorted array. After finding the index, check whether the element at index + n/2 is the same as the target. If it is, the target appears more than half the time and is the majority element.