How should I practice Most Value from At Most Two Projects?

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

Is Most Value from At Most Two Projects associated with Hudson River Trading?

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

Most Value from At Most Two Projects

Hudson River Trading● MediumFULLTIMEOA

Problem statement

Source note: The report lists this as the third of three questions on a Python developer coding test. It describes a company with projects that each have a value, some rules about the order of the work, and room to finish two projects at most, with the goal of the most value. It gives no input format, examples or limits.

The report does not say exactly what a requirement means, whether values can be negative, or what to return. Here a requirement [a, b] means a must be finished before b, so a chosen project needs all of its required projects among the chosen ones. Values can be negative, finishing nothing scores 0, and requirements can form cycles. You return the best total instead of the two projects. There are 1 to 10^4 projects and up to 10^4 requirements, which are practice choices.

The judged task matches the report at about 65%.

A company has n projects, numbered 0 to n - 1. Finishing project i adds values[i] to the company's total. A value can be negative, which means that project loses money.

Each requirement [a, b] in requirements means project a must be finished before project b can start.

The company can finish at most 2 projects. A project can start only after all of its required projects are finished, so every required project must also be one of the chosen ones. Requirements can form a cycle, and a project on a cycle can never start.

Return the largest total value the company can get. Finishing no projects gives a total of 0.

Function

maxProjectValue(values: int[], requirements: int[][]) → int

Examples

Example 1

values = [5,-2,9]requirements = [[1,2]]return = 7

Project 2 is worth the most, but project 1 must be completed first. The sets the company can complete are:

{0}: 5
{1}: -2
{0, 1}: 5 + (-2) = 3
{1, 2}: -2 + 9 = 7

Project 2 alone and {0, 2} are not allowed, because they leave out project 1. The best total is 7.

Example 2

values = [4,6,3,8]requirements = [[0,1],[1,3],[2,3]]return = 10

Projects 0 and 2 have no requirements. Project 1 needs only project 0. Project 3 needs both 1 and 2, and its own chain also needs 0, so it can never fit in 2 projects.

The best choices are {0, 1} with 4 + 6 = 10, {0, 2} with 4 + 3 = 7, and single projects worth at most 4. The answer is 10.

Example 3

values = [-3,7,6]requirements = [[1,2],[2,1]]return = 0

Projects 1 and 2 each require the other, so neither can ever be started. Only project 0 can be completed, and it is worth -3.

Completing nothing gives 0, which is better, so the answer is 0.

Constraints

1 <= values.length <= 10^4
-10^9 <= values[i] <= 10^9
0 <= requirements.length <= 10^4
requirements[i].length == 2
0 <= requirements[i][0], requirements[i][1] < values.length
requirements[i][0] != requirements[i][1]
No requirement appears twice.