Container With Most Water

Category

Two Pointers

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Difficulty

Medium

Index

Key Ideas

The key idea to solve this problem is to use two pointers approach, starting from the two ends of the array and gradually moving towards the center, while keeping track of the maximum area formed by the containers.

Problem Number

Problem Summary

The problem "Container With Most Water" is about finding the maximum area that can be formed by two lines on a coordinate plane, given a list of non-negative integers representing the heights of the lines. The key pitfall in this problem is to not overlook the fact that the area is determined by the shorter line, so it's important to update the pointers based on the heights to maximize the area.

Solution Summary

The best solution to solve the "Container With Most Water" problem involves using the two pointers approach. The idea is to initialize two pointers, one at the beginning and one at the end of the array. Calculate the area between the pointers, which is determined by the minimum height of the two bars multiplied by the distance between them. Then, move the pointer with the smaller height towards the other pointer. Repeat this process until the pointers meet. By doing so, we are effectively maximizing the area by considering the widest possible container and gradually moving towards greater heights. This solution has a time complexity of O(n) as it only requires a single traversal of the array.