Code Room
CodingMediumcod-g536
Subject Fenwick treeLevel Mid–Senior~30 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given an integer array, count the number of inversions: pairs of indices (i, j) with i < j and arr[i] > arr[j]. Values may be large and negative, so coordinate-compress them and use a Fenwick (binary indexed) tree to count, for each element processed left to right, how many already-seen elements are strictly greater. Return the total inversion count. The array length is up to 1e5, so an O(n log n) solution is expected (O(n^2) will time out).

Implement
count_inversions(arr: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[2,3,8,6,1]]out5
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.