How should I practice Minimum Absolute Sum?

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

Is Minimum Absolute Sum associated with Google?

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

Minimum Absolute Sum

Google● EasyNEW GRADINTERNOA

Problem statement

There is an array A consisting of N integers. Choose at most one element to multiply by -1 in order to obtain an array whose sum of elements is as close to 0 as possible. That is, find the sum with the minimum absolute value.

that, given an array A, returns the minimum absolute value of the sum of A that can be obtained.

Function

minAbsoluteSum(A: int[]) → int

Examples

Example 1

A = [1, 3, 2, 5]return = 1

Negating 5 changes the total from 11 to 1, which is optimal.

Example 2

A = [-4, 0, -3, 3]return = 2

Negating -3 produces [-4, 0, 3, 3] with sum 2, which is optimal.

Example 3

A = [4, -3, 5, -7]return = 1

The original sum is -1, and no sign flip improves its absolute value.

Example 4

A = [-15, 18, 1, -1, 10, -22]return = 7

The original sum is -9. Negating -1 changes the sum to -7, so the minimum absolute value is 7.

Constraints

N is an integer within the range [1..100,000];
each element of array A is an integer within the range [-1,000..1,000].

Source note: The screenshots are independent source sightings of the same Google New Grad OA question.