Grokking the coding interview equivalent leetcode problems

grokking_to_leetcode.md

GROKKING NOTES

I liked the way Grokking the coding interview organized problems into learnable patterns. However, the course is expensive and the majority of the time the problems are copy-pasted from leetcode. As the explanations on leetcode are usually just as good, the course really boils down to being a glorified curated list of leetcode problems.

So below I made a list of leetcode problems that are as close to grokking problems as possible.

Pattern: Sliding Window

• https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-subarray/ # Close enough
• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-size-subarray-sum/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-substring-with-at-most-k-distinct-characters/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/fruit-into-baskets/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-substring-without-repeating-characters/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-repeating-character-replacement/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/permutation-in-string/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-all-anagrams-in-a-string/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-window-substring/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/substring-with-concatenation-of-all-words/

Pattern: Two Pointers

• https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-duplicates-from-sorted-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/squares-of-a-sorted-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/3sum/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/3sum-closest/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/3sum-smaller/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-product-less-than-k/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/sort-colors/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/4sum/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/backspace-string-compare/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-unsorted-continuous-subarray/

Pattern: Fast & Slow pointers

• https://leetcode.com/problems/linked-list-cycle/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/linked-list-cycle-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/happy-number/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/middle-of-the-linked-list/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/palindrome-linked-list/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/reorder-list/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/circular-array-loop/

Pattern: Merge Intervals

• https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-intervals/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/insert-interval/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/interval-list-intersections/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/meeting-rooms-ii/
• Could not find equivalent. Given a list of intervals with values, find the peak sum (i.e. if intervals are overlapping, sum their values)
• https://leetcode.com/problems/employee-free-time/

Pattern: Cyclic Sort

• Couldn't find equivalent for the first question. The second question below encompasses the first one though. See https://leetcode.com/problems/missing-number/discuss/859510/C%2B%2B-O(N)-O(1)-using-Cyclic-Sort for how grokking the coding interview approached these problems. It uses the fact that we can sort the array in O(n) without comparison operators
• https://leetcode.com/problems/missing-number/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-all-numbers-disappeared-in-an-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-all-duplicates-in-an-array/
• combine https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-duplicate-number/ and https://leetcode.com/problems/missing-number/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/first-missing-positive/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-missing-positive-number/

Pattern: In-place Reversal of a LinkedList

• https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-linked-list/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-linked-list-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-nodes-in-k-group/
• Next question is the same, but alternate each subgroup
• https://leetcode.com/problems/rotate-list/

Pattern: Tree Breadth First Search

• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-level-order-traversal/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-level-order-traversal-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-zigzag-level-order-traversal/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-depth-of-binary-tree/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/inorder-successor-in-bst/ # Close, not exact
• https://leetcode.com/problems/populating-next-right-pointers-in-each-node/ # Close, grokk assumes non-perfect tree
• Next question is the same, but connect end nodes to the next level instead of null
• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-right-side-view/

Pattern: Tree Depth First Search

• https://leetcode.com/problems/path-sum/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/path-sum-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-root-to-leaf-numbers/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/check-if-a-string-is-a-valid-sequence-from-root-to-leaves-path-in-a-binary-tree/description/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/path-sum-iii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/diameter-of-binary-tree/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-maximum-path-sum/

Pattern: Two Heaps

• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-median-from-data-stream/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/sliding-window-median/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/ipo/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-right-interval/

Pattern: Subsets

• https://leetcode.com/problems/subsets/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/subsets-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/permutations/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/letter-case-permutation/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/generate-parentheses/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/generalized-abbreviation/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/different-ways-to-add-parentheses/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/unique-binary-search-trees-ii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/unique-binary-search-trees/

Pattern: Modified Binary Search

• https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-search/ # Close enough. The grokking problem allows sorted input arrays as ascending or descending, which only introduces a simple check
• Did not find. Problem is find index of smallest element greater or equal to input value
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-smallest-letter-greater-than-target/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-first-and-last-position-of-element-in-sorted-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/search-in-a-sorted-array-of-unknown-size/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-k-closest-elements/ (with K == 1)
• https://leetcode.com/problems/peak-index-in-a-mountain-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-in-mountain-array/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/search-in-rotated-sorted-array/
• Similar to previous, but find the number of rotations of the array.

Pattern: Bitwise XOR

• https://leetcode.com/problems/single-number/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/single-number-iii/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/complement-of-base-10-integer/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/flipping-an-image/

Pattern: Top 'K' elements

• Same as second question, but the first Grokking question wants the top K instead of the bottom K
• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array
• https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-cost-to-connect-sticks/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/top-k-frequent-elements/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/sort-characters-by-frequency/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-a-stream/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-k-closest-elements/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/least-number-of-unique-integers-after-k-removals/ closest leetcode or https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/maximum-distinct-elements-removing-k-elements/ for exact
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/sum-elements-k1th-k2th-smallest-elements/ no leetcode equivalent found
• https://leetcode.com/problems/reorganize-string/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/rearrange-string-k-distance-apart/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/task-scheduler/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-frequency-stack/

Pattern: K-way merge

• https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-k-sorted-lists/
• Same as previous, but return the Kth smallest number
• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-smallest-element-in-a-sorted-matrix/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/smallest-range-covering-elements-from-k-lists/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/find-k-pairs-with-smallest-sums/ small difference, grokking has different sort order and wants the largest

Pattern: 0/1 Knapsack

• https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-dynamic-programming-patterns-for-coding-interviews/RM1BDv71V60
• https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-dynamic-programming-patterns-for-coding-interviews/3jEPRo5PDvx or https://leetcode.com/problems/partition-equal-subset-sum/
• https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-dynamic-programming-patterns-for-coding-interviews/3j64vRY6JnR
• https://leetcode.com/problems/last-stone-weight-ii/ similar concept, but problem description is more abstract.
• https://leetcode.com/problems/combination-sum-ii/ similar, but return the number of combinations instead of the combinations
• https://leetcode.com/problems/target-sum/
• BONUS : Not in grokking, but I still found this very useful https://leetcode.com/problems/ones-and-zeroes/

Pattern: Topological Sort

• First problem is identical to the following three
• https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii/
• Same as above, but return all instead of any
• https://leetcode.com/problems/alien-dictionary/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/sequence-reconstruction/description/
• https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-height-trees/

Misc

• https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-largest-element-in-an-array/

https://libgen.is/search.php?req=grokking+the+coding+interview&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def
(grokking the coding interview course ---> zip file link ---> use "7-zip" to extract after downloading)
If link isn't working , then go to libgen (generally libgen.is) and search for the course there....the extracting method remains the same.

This is awesome, thanks! Have you seen the system design interview somewhere?

No but if you do, kindly share.

I found this: https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
Some people mentioned it's inspired by grokking, but I wouldn't know.

Awesome list!

For Cyclic Sort, you have the last item in the list linked to https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-missing-positive-number/ which is not correct.

The leetcode question has an array of sorted, positive numbers and you are looking for the kth missing positive. This is an LC easy and you don't even need cyclic sort since the numbers are already sorted.

The grokking question is an unsorted array containing both positive and negative numbers, possibly duplicate values, and you are finding all values from 1-k. This is a LC hard (per grokking)

There is a new grokking course on Educative. I am creating a new mapping. Pull requests are appreciated. Link: https://github.com/navidre/new_grokking_to_leetcode

letss goo

If you feel bad for the author pay $79 for lifetime access. There is a 20% off coupon so its $63.20. https://designgurus.org/course/grokking-the-coding-interview

I bought the course a couple months ago for full price and all I can say is that I regret buying it and feel it was a waste of money. For how much it costs for what is basically a curated LeetCode problem set with solutions, a significant amount of the solutions don't offer much in depth or detailed explanation and some of the solutions fail to pass their closest LC equivalent problems. I've found better solution explanations and help from looking on the Discuss page of those LC problems and watching NeetCode's video solutions.

Thanks for sharing

Thanks