Practice/Amazon/Leetcode 453. Minimum Moves to Equal Array Elements

Leetcode 453. Minimum Moves to Equal Array Elements

CodingMust

Problem

You are given an integer array nums of size n. In one move, you can select any element and increment all other n - 1 elements by 1.

Your task is to find the minimum number of moves required to make all elements in the array equal.

Requirements

1. Implement a function that takes an integer array as input
2. Calculate the minimum number of moves to equalize all elements
3. A move consists of incrementing n - 1 elements by 1 (leaving one element unchanged)
4. Return the total number of moves needed

Constraints

• 1 <= nums.length <= 10^5
• -10^9 <= nums[i] <= 10^9
• The solution should run in O(n) time complexity
• The solution should use O(1) extra space (aside from input)

Examples

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1, 2, 3] Output: 3 Explanation: Start: [1, 2, 3] Move 1: Increment first two elements → [2, 3, 3] Move 2: Increment first two elements → [3, 4, 3] Move 3: Increment first and last → [4, 4, 4]

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1, 1, 1] Output: 0 Explanation: All elements are already equal, so no moves are needed.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [5, 6, 8, 8, 5] Output: 7 Explanation: The minimum value is 5. We need 7 total moves to bring all elements to the same level.