How should I practice Data Reorganization?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Goldman Sachs online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Data Reorganization associated with Goldman Sachs?

FastPrep tags this as a Goldman Sachs online assessment coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Problem · Array

Data Reorganization

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● Hard

Goldman SachsOA

Problem statement

While analyzing data, you are working with an array data containing n positive integers, each representing a dataset values.

To derive new features for data analysis, you can perform the following operations:

1. Select a pair of indices (i,j) (0-based) such that 0 ≤ i < j < len(data).

2. Compute the absolute difference |data[i] - data[j]|.

3. Append this value to the end of the array data, increasing its length by 1.

The objective is to minimize the smallest value present in data after performing exactly maxOperations operations.

Write a program to compute the minimum possible value of the smallest element in data after the given operations.

Function

getMinimumValue(data: int[], maxOperations: int) → int

Complete the function getMinimumValue in the editor with the following parameters:

int data[]: the dataset
int maxOperations: the number of operations to be performed

Returns

int: the smallest possible value of the minimum element in data after exactly maxOperations operations.

Constraints

2 ≤ n ≤ 2*10^3
1 ≤ data[i] ≤ 10^9
1 ≤ maxOperations ≤ 10^9

🍻 Many, many thanks to one of our dearest and very best friends for being with FastPrep every step of the way! (Oct 17, 2025 :) 🧡

Examples

Example 1

data = [42, 47, 50, 54, 62, 79]maxOperations = 2return = 3

The underlined values are selected for each operation. One optimal sequence is:

Operation Number	`data[]` before	`data[]` after
1	`[42, 47, 50, 54, 62, 79]`	`[42, 47, 50, 54, 62, 79, 15]`
2	`[42, 47, 50, 54, 62, 79, 15]`	`[42, 47, 50, 54, 62, 79, 15, 3]`

The first operation appends |47 - 62| = 15. The second appends |47 - 50| = 3. The smallest possible value of the minimum element is 3.

Example 2

data = [4, 2, 5, 9, 3]maxOperations = 1return = 1

The underlined values are selected for the operation. One optimal operation is:

Operation Number	`data[]` before	`data[]` after
1	`[4, 2, 5, 9, 3]`	`[4, 2, 5, 9, 3, 1]`

The operation appends |4 - 3| = 1. The smallest possible value of the minimum element is 1.

Example 3

data = [5, 18, 3, 12, 11]maxOperations = 2return = 1

The smallest possible value of the minimum element is 1 :)

Constraints

See the very last portion of the problem statement above 👆