2nd smallest number from 32 numbers
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You have 32 numbers. What is the least number of comparison needed to find the 2nd smallest out of them?
35 comparisons
Explanation:
You can create a tournament to find the smallest in 31 comparisons. If we need to find the second smallest, we only need to determine the smallest between those which lost to the smallest. If we use a balance binary tree, there are at most 5 such values which require 4 comparisons.
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