Efficient method for identifying few largest differences from a list of numbers

摘要

A method is provided that finds the largest 'k' difference values in decreasing order from a list of 'n' arbitrary numbers. The method uses the property of sorted numbers to organize the list of all the differences in a way that reduces the size of the solution space. The time complexity of the solution space using the method is O(k2), as compared to O(n2) in the conventional exhaustive method. The overall time complexity of the method is bound by the complexity of the algorithm used to sort the input list of numbers. The memory complexity of the method is less than the exhaustive method when k<<n.