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Python Tricks for Competitive Coding
Python is one such programming language which makes everything easier and straight
forward. Anyone who has dabbled in python for Competitive Coding gets somewhat
addicted to its many features. Here is list of some of its cool features that that I’ve found
most useful in a competitive coding environment.

1. The most_common function of the Counter Package.

This is probably the most useful function I’ve ever used and its always at the back of
my mind while writing any python code. This function analyses a list/string and
helps to return the top n entities in the list/string according to their number of
occurences in descending order where n is a number that is speci ed by the
programmer. The individual entities are returned along with their number of
occurences in a tuple which can easily be reffered/printed as and when required.

# Code to find top 3 elements and their counts

# using most_common
from collections import Counter
  
arr = [1, 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 4, 3, 5, 1, 2, 5, 3, 4, 5]
counter = Counter(arr)
top_three = counter.most_common(3)
print(top_three)

Output:

[(1, 5), (3, 4), (4, 3)]

The output tuple clearly states that 1 has occured 5 times, 3 has occured 4 times,
and 4 has occured 3 times.

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2. The n-largest/n-smallest function of the heapq Package.

This function helps to return the top n smallest/largest elements in any lists and
here again n is a number speci ed by the programmer.

# Python code to find 3 largest and 4 smallest

# elements of a list.
import heapq
  
grades = [110, 25, 38, 49, 20, 95, 33, 87, 80, 90]
print(heapq.nlargest(3, grades))
print(heapq.nsmallest(4, grades))

Output:

[110, 95, 90]

[20, 25, 33, 38]

The rst line of output gives 3 of the largest numbers present in the list grades.
Similarly the second line of output prints out 4 of the smallest elements present in
the list grades. Another speciality of this function is that it does not overlook
repetitions. So in place of n if we were to place the length of the array the we would
end up with the entire sorted array itself !!

3. Dictionary and concept of zipping Dictionaries

Dictionaries in python are truly fascinating in terms of the unique functionality that
they offer. They are stored as a Key and Value pair in the form of an array like
structure. Each value can be accessed by its corresponding key.
The zip function is used to join two lists together or we can even join the key and
value pairs in a dictionary together as a single list. The application of this concept
will be made clear in the following code snippet.

# Python code to demonstrate use of zip.

import heapq
  
stocks = {
    'Goog' : 520.54,
    'FB' : 76.45,
    'yhoo' : 39.28,
    'AMZN' : 306.21,
    'APPL' : 99.76
    }
  
zipped_1 = zip(stocks.values(), stocks.keys())

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# sorting according to values
print(sorted(zipped_1))
  
zipped_2 = zip(stocks.keys(), stocks.values())
print(sorted(zipped_2))
#sorting according to keys

Output:

[(39.28, 'yhoo'), (76.45, 'FB'), (99.76, 'APPL'), (306.21, 'AMZN'

[('AMZN', 306.21), ('APPL', 99.76), ('FB', 76.45), ('Goog', 520.5

4. The Map function.

This function is a sneaky little shortcut that allows us to implement a simple
function on a list of values in a very Unconventional Manner. The following example
will give a simple application of this functionality. The function takes as parameters
the function name and the name of the list the function needs to be applied upon.

# Python code to apply a function on a list

income = [10, 30, 75]
  
def double_money(dollars):
    return dollars * 2
  
new_income = list(map(double_money, income))
print(new_income)

Output:

[20, 60, 150]

Here, we just implemented a simple function which multiplies each list value by two
and returns it as a new list.

Individually these functions might look innocent but will de nitely come in handy in a
TIME LIMITED CODING ENVIRONMENT in the sense that they offer large functionality in
a VERY short amount of code. The functionalities discussed have very speci c
applications and act like a SHORTCUT or a CHEAT-SHEET in competitive coding. Having
these useful tricks up your sleeve might just give someone the COMPETITIVE EDGE that
they were looking for !!

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This article is contributed by Siddhant Bajaj. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to
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Please write comments if you nd anything incorrect, or you want to share more
information about the topic discussed above.

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Article Tags : Competitive Programming Python

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