Question

Suppose we are given an array of n integers representing stock prices on a single day. We want to find a pair (buyDay, sellDay), with buyDay ≤ sellDay, such that if we bought the stock on buyDay and sold it on sellDay, we would maximize our profit.

Clearly there is an O(n²) solution to the algorithm by trying out all possible (buyDay, sellDay) pairs and taking the best out of all of them. However, is there a better algorithm, perhaps one that runs in O(n) time?

Answer 1

I love this problem. It’s a classic interview question and depending on how you think about it, you’ll end up getting better and better solutions. It’s certainly possible to do this in better than O(n²) time, and I’ve listed three different ways that you can think about the problem here.

First, the divide-and-conquer solution. Let’s see if we can solve this by splitting the input in half, solving the problem in each subarray, then combining the two together. Turns out we actually can do this, and can do so efficiently! The intuition is as follows. If we have a single day, the best option is to buy on that day and then sell it back on the same day for no profit. Otherwise, split the array into two halves. If we think about what the optimal answer might be, it must be in one of three places:

1. The correct buy/sell pair occurs completely within the first half.
2. The correct buy/sell pair occurs completely within the second half.
3. The correct buy/sell pair occurs across both halves – we buy in the first half, then sell in the second half.

We can get the values for (1) and (2) by recursively invoking our algorithm on the first and second halves. For option (3), the way to make the highest profit would be to buy at the lowest point in the first half and sell in the greatest point in the second half. We can find the minimum and maximum values in the two halves by just doing a simple linear scan over the input and finding the two values. This then gives us an algorithm with the following recurrence:

T(1) <= O(1)
T(n) <= 2T(n / 2) + O(n)

Using the Master Theorem to solve the recurrence, we find that this runs in O(n lg n) time and will use O(lg n) space for the recursive calls. We’ve just beaten the naive O(n²) solution!

But wait! We can do much better than this. Notice that the only reason we have an O(n) term in our recurrence is that we had to scan the entire input trying to find the minimum and maximum values in each half. Since we’re already recursively exploring each half, perhaps we can do better by having the recursion also hand back the minimum and maximum values stored in each half! In other words, our recursion hands back three things:

1. The buy and sell times to maximize profit.
2. The minimum value overall in the range.
3. The maximum value overall in the range.

These last two values can be computed recursively using a straightforward recursion that we can run at the same time as the recursion to compute (1):

1. The max and min values of a single-element range are just that element.
2. The max and min values of a multiple element range can be found by splitting the input in half, finding the max and min values of each half, then taking their respective max and min.

If we use this approach, our recurrence relation is now

T(1) <= O(1)
T(n) <= 2T(n / 2) + O(1)

Using the Master Theorem here gives us a runtime of O(n) with O(lg n) space, which is even better than our original solution!

But wait a minute – we can do even better than this! Let’s think about solving this problem using dynamic programming. The idea will be to think about the problem as follows. Suppose that we knew the answer to the problem after looking at the first k elements. Could we use our knowledge of the (k+1)st element, combined with our initial solution, to solve the problem for the first (k+1) elements? If so, we could get a great algorithm going by solving the problem for the first element, then the first two, then the first three, etc. until we’d computed it for the first n elements.

Let’s think about how to do this. If we have just one element, we already know that it has to be the best buy/sell pair. Now suppose we know the best answer for the first k elements and look at the (k+1)st element. Then the only way that this value can create a solution better than what we had for the first k elements is if the difference between the smallest of the first k elements and that new element is bigger than the biggest difference we’ve computed so far. So suppose that as we’re going across the elements, we keep track of two values – the minimum value we’ve seen so far, and the maximum profit we could make with just the first k elements. Initially, the minimum value we’ve seen so far is the first element, and the maximum profit is zero. When we see a new element, we first update our optimal profit by computing how much we’d make by buying at the lowest price seen so far and selling at the current price. If this is better than the optimal value we’ve computed so far, then we update the optimal solution to be this new profit. Next, we update the minimum element seen so far to be the minimum of the current smallest element and the new element.

Since at each step we do only O(1) work and we’re visiting each of the n elements exactly once, this takes O(n) time to complete! Moreover, it only uses O(1) auxiliary storage. This is as good as we’ve gotten so far!

As an example, on your inputs, here’s how this algorithm might run. The numbers in-between each of the values of the array correspond to the values held by the algorithm at that point. You wouldn’t actually store all of these (it would take O(n) memory!), but it’s helpful to see the algorithm evolve:

            5        10        4          6         7
min         5         5        4          4         4    
best      (5,5)     (5,10)   (5,10)     (5,10)    (5,10)

Answer: (5, 10)

            5        10        4          6        12
min         5         5        4          4         4    
best      (5,5)     (5,10)   (5,10)     (5,10)    (4,12)

Answer: (4, 12)

            1       2       3      4      5
min         1       1       1      1      1
best      (1,1)   (1,2)   (1,3)  (1,4)  (1,5)

Answer: (1, 5)

Can we do better now? Unfortunately, not in an asymptotic sense. If we use less than O(n) time, we can’t look at all the numbers on large inputs and thus can’t guarantee that we won’t miss the optimal answer (we could just "hide" it in the elements we didn’t look at). Plus, we can’t use any less than O(1) space. There might be some optimizations to the constant factors hidden in the big-O notation, but otherwise we can’t expect to find any radically better options.

Overall, this means that we have the following algorithms:

• Naive: O(n²) time, O(1) space.
• Divide-and-Conquer: O(n lg n) time, O(lg n) space.
• Optimized Divide-and-Conquer: O(n) time, O(lg n) space.
• Dynamic programming: O(n) time, O(1) space.

EDIT: If you’re interested, I’ve coded up a Python version of these four algorithms so that you can play around with them and judge their relative performances. Here’s the code:

# Four different algorithms for solving the maximum single-sell profit problem,
# each of which have different time and space complexity.  This is one of my
# all-time favorite algorithms questions, since there are so many different
# answers that you can arrive at by thinking about the problem in slightly
# different ways.
#
# The maximum single-sell profit problem is defined as follows.  You are given
# an array of stock prices representing the value of some stock over time.
# Assuming that you are allowed to buy the stock exactly once and sell the
# stock exactly once, what is the maximum profit you can make?  For example,
# given the prices
#
#                        2, 7, 1, 8, 2, 8, 4, 5, 9, 0, 4, 5
#
# The maximum profit you can make is 8, by buying when the stock price is 1 and
# selling when the stock price is 9.  Note that while the greatest difference
# in the array is 9 (by subtracting 9 - 0), we cannot actually make a profit of
# 9 here because the stock price of 0 comes after the stock price of 9 (though
# if we wanted to lose a lot of money, buying high and selling low would be a
# great idea!)
#
# In the event that there's no profit to be made at all, we can always buy and
# sell on the same date.  For example, given these prices (which might
# represent a buggy-whip manufacturer:)
#
#                            9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0
#
# The best profit we can make is 0 by buying and selling on the same day.
#
# Let's begin by writing the simplest and easiest algorithm we know of that
# can solve this problem - brute force.  We will just consider all O(n^2) pairs
# of values, and then pick the one with the highest net profit.  There are
# exactly n + (n - 1) + (n - 2) + ... + 1 = n(n + 1)/2 different pairs to pick
# from, so this algorithm will grow quadratically in the worst-case.  However,
# it uses only O(1) memory, which is a somewhat attractive feature.  Plus, if
# our first intuition for the problem gives a quadratic solution, we can be
# satisfied that if we don't come up with anything else, we can always have a
# polynomial-time solution.

def BruteForceSingleSellProfit(arr):
    # Store the best possible profit we can make; initially this is 0.
    bestProfit = 0;

    # Iterate across all pairs and find the best out of all of them.  As a
    # minor optimization, we don't consider any pair consisting of a single
    # element twice, since we already know that we get profit 0 from this.
    for i in range(0, len(arr)):
        for j in range (i + 1, len(arr)):
            bestProfit = max(bestProfit, arr[j] - arr[i])

    return bestProfit

# This solution is extremely inelegant, and it seems like there just *has* to
# be a better solution.  In fact, there are many better solutions, and we'll
# see three of them.
#
# The first insight comes if we try to solve this problem by using a divide-
# and-conquer strategy.  Let's consider what happens if we split the array into
# two (roughly equal) halves.  If we do so, then there are three possible
# options about where the best buy and sell times are:
#
# 1. We should buy and sell purely in the left half of the array.
# 2. We should buy and sell purely in the right half of the array.
# 3. We should buy in the left half of the array and sell in the right half of
#    the array.
#
# (Note that we don't need to consider selling in the left half of the array
# and buying in the right half of the array, since the buy time must always
# come before the sell time)
#
# If we want to solve this problem recursively, then we can get values for (1)
# and (2) by recursively invoking the algorithm on the left and right
# subarrays.  But what about (3)?  Well, if we want to maximize our profit, we
# should be buying at the lowest possible cost in the left half of the array
# and selling at the highest possible cost in the right half of the array.
# This gives a very elegant algorithm for solving this problem:
#
#    If the array has size 0 or size 1, the maximum profit is 0.
#    Otherwise:
#       Split the array in half.
#       Compute the maximum single-sell profit in the left array, call it L.
#       Compute the maximum single-sell profit in the right array, call it R.
#       Find the minimum of the first half of the array, call it Min
#       Find the maximum of the second half of the array, call it Max
#       Return the maximum of L, R, and Max - Min.
#
# Let's consider the time and space complexity of this algorithm.  Our base
# case takes O(1) time, and in our recursive step we make two recursive calls,
# one on each half of the array, and then does O(n) work to scan the array
# elements to find the minimum and maximum values.  This gives the recurrence
#
#    T(1) = O(1)
#    T(n) = 2T(n / 2) + O(n)
#
# Using the Master Theorem, this recurrence solves to O(n log n), which is
# asymptotically faster than our original approach!  However, we do pay a
# (slight) cost in memory usage.  Because we need to maintain space for all of
# the stack frames we use.  Since on each recursive call we cut the array size
# in half, the maximum number of recursive calls we can make is O(log n), so
# this algorithm uses O(n log n) time and O(log n) memory.

def DivideAndConquerSingleSellProfit(arr):
    # Base case: If the array has zero or one elements in it, the maximum
    # profit is 0.
    if len(arr) <= 1:
        return 0;

    # Cut the array into two roughly equal pieces.
    left  = arr[ : len(arr) / 2]
    right = arr[len(arr) / 2 : ]

    # Find the values for buying and selling purely in the left or purely in
    # the right.
    leftBest  = DivideAndConquerSingleSellProfit(left)
    rightBest = DivideAndConquerSingleSellProfit(right)

    # Compute the best profit for buying in the left and selling in the right.
    crossBest = max(right) - min(left)

    # Return the best of the three
    return max(leftBest, rightBest, crossBest)
    
# While the above algorithm for computing the maximum single-sell profit is
# better timewise than what we started with (O(n log n) versus O(n^2)), we can
# still improve the time performance.  In particular, recall our recurrence
# relation:
#
#    T(1) = O(1)
#    T(n) = 2T(n / 2) + O(n)
#
# Here, the O(n) term in the T(n) case comes from the work being done to find
# the maximum and minimum values in the right and left halves of the array,
# respectively.  If we could find these values faster than what we're doing
# right now, we could potentially decrease the function's runtime.
#
# The key observation here is that we can compute the minimum and maximum
# values of an array using a divide-and-conquer approach.  Specifically:
#
#    If the array has just one element, it is the minimum and maximum value.
#    Otherwise:
#       Split the array in half.
#       Find the minimum and maximum values from the left and right halves.
#       Return the minimum and maximum of these two values.
#
# Notice that our base case does only O(1) work, and our recursive case manages
# to do only O(1) work in addition to the recursive calls.  This gives us the
# recurrence relation
#
#    T(1) = O(1)
#    T(n) = 2T(n / 2) + O(1)
#
# Using the Master Theorem, this solves to O(n).
#
# How can we make use of this result?  Well, in our current divide-and-conquer
# solution, we split the array in half anyway to find the maximum profit we
# could make in the left and right subarrays.  Could we have those recursive
# calls also hand back the maximum and minimum values of the respective arrays?
# If so, we could rewrite our solution as follows:
#
#    If the array has size 1, the maximum profit is zero and the maximum and
#       minimum values are the single array element.
#    Otherwise:
#       Split the array in half.
#       Compute the maximum single-sell profit in the left array, call it L.
#       Compute the maximum single-sell profit in the right array, call it R.
#       Let Min be the minimum value in the left array, which we got from our
#           first recursive call.
#       Let Max be the maximum value in the right array, which we got from our
#           second recursive call.
#       Return the maximum of L, R, and Max - Min for the maximum single-sell
#           profit, and the appropriate maximum and minimum values found from
#           the recursive calls.
#
# The correctness proof for this algorithm works just as it did before, but now
# we never actually do a scan of the array at each step.  In fact, we do only
# O(1) work at each level.  This gives a new recurrence
#
#     T(1) = O(1)
#     T(n) = 2T(n / 2) + O(1)
#
# Which solves to O(n).  We're now using O(n) time and O(log n) memory, which
# is asymptotically faster than before!
#
# The code for this is given below:

def OptimizedDivideAndConquerSingleSellProfit(arr):
    # If the array is empty, the maximum profit is zero.
    if len(arr) == 0:
        return 0

    # This recursive helper function implements the above recurrence.  It
    # returns a triple of (max profit, min array value, max array value).  For
    # efficiency reasons, we always reuse the array and specify the bounds as
    # [lhs, rhs]
    def Recursion(arr, lhs, rhs):
        # If the array has just one element, we return that the profit is zero
        # but the minimum and maximum values are just that array value.
        if lhs == rhs:
            return (0, arr[lhs], arr[rhs])

        # Recursively compute the values for the first and latter half of the
        # array.  To do this, we need to split the array in half.  The line
        # below accomplishes this in a way that, if ported to other languages,
        # cannot result in an integer overflow.
        mid = lhs + (rhs - lhs) / 2
        
        # Perform the recursion.
        ( leftProfit,  leftMin,  leftMax) = Recursion(arr, lhs, mid)
        (rightProfit, rightMin, rightMax) = Recursion(arr, mid + 1, rhs)

        # Our result is the maximum possible profit, the minimum of the two
        # minima we've found (since the minimum of these two values gives the
        # minimum of the overall array), and the maximum of the two maxima.
        maxProfit = max(leftProfit, rightProfit, rightMax - leftMin)
        return (maxProfit, min(leftMin, rightMin), max(leftMax, rightMax))

    # Using our recursive helper function, compute the resulting value.
    profit, _, _ = Recursion(arr, 0, len(arr) - 1)
    return profit

# At this point we've traded our O(n^2)-time, O(1)-space solution for an O(n)-
# time, O(log n) space solution.  But can we do better than this?
#
# To find a better algorithm, we'll need to switch our line of reasoning.
# Rather than using divide-and-conquer, let's see what happens if we use
# dynamic programming.  In particular, let's think about the following problem.
# If we knew the maximum single-sell profit that we could get in just the first
# k array elements, could we use this information to determine what the
# maximum single-sell profit would be in the first k + 1 array elements?  If we
# could do this, we could use the following algorithm:
#
#   Find the maximum single-sell profit to be made in the first 1 elements.
#   For i = 2 to n:
#      Compute the maximum single-sell profit using the first i elements.
#
# How might we do this?  One intuition is as follows.  Suppose that we know the
# maximum single-sell profit of the first k elements.  If we look at k + 1
# elements, then either the maximum profit we could make by buying and selling
# within the first k elements (in which case nothing changes), or we're
# supposed to sell at the (k + 1)st price.  If we wanted to sell at this price
# for a maximum profit, then we would want to do so by buying at the lowest of
# the first k + 1 prices, then selling at the (k + 1)st price.
#
# To accomplish this, suppose that we keep track of the minimum value in the
# first k elements, along with the maximum profit we could make in the first
# k elements.  Upon seeing the (k + 1)st element, we update what the current
# minimum value is, then update what the maximum profit we can make is by
# seeing whether the difference between the (k + 1)st element and the new
# minimum value is.  Note that it doesn't matter what order we do this in; if
# the (k + 1)st element is the smallest element so far, there's no possible way
# that we could increase our profit by selling at that point.
#
# To finish up this algorithm, we should note that given just the first price,
# the maximum possible profit is 0.
#
# This gives the following simple and elegant algorithm for the maximum single-
# sell profit problem:
#
#   Let profit = 0.
#   Let min = arr[0]
#   For k = 1 to length(arr):
#       If arr[k] < min, set min = arr[k]
#       If profit < arr[k] - min, set profit = arr[k] - min
#
# This is short, sweet, and uses only O(n) time and O(1) memory.  The beauty of
# this solution is that we are quite naturally led there by thinking about how
# to update our answer to the problem in response to seeing some new element.
# In fact, we could consider implementing this algorithm as a streaming
# algorithm, where at each point in time we maintain the maximum possible
# profit and then update our answer every time new data becomes available.
#
# The final version of this algorithm is shown here:

def DynamicProgrammingSingleSellProfit(arr):
    # If the array is empty, we cannot make a profit.
    if len(arr) == 0:
        return 0

    # Otherwise, keep track of the best possible profit and the lowest value
    # seen so far.
    profit = 0
    cheapest = arr[0]

    # Iterate across the array, updating our answer as we go according to the
    # above pseudocode.
    for i in range(1, len(arr)):
        # Update the minimum value to be the lower of the existing minimum and
        # the new minimum.
        cheapest = min(cheapest, arr[i])

        # Update the maximum profit to be the larger of the old profit and the
        # profit made by buying at the lowest value and selling at the current
        # price.
        profit = max(profit, arr[i] - cheapest)

    return profit

# To summarize our algorithms, we have seen
#
# Naive:                        O(n ^ 2)   time, O(1)     space
# Divide-and-conquer:           O(n log n) time, O(log n) space
# Optimized divide-and-conquer: O(n)       time, O(log n) space
# Dynamic programming:          O(n)       time, O(1)     space