CodingHardcod-g560

Subject SortingLevel Senior–Staff~28 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given an integer array nums, count the number of inversions: pairs (i, j) with i < j and nums[i] > nums[j]. Array length is up to 1e5, so an O(n^2) approach will time out. Return the count as an integer.

Implement

count_inversions(nums: list[int]) → int

Examples

in[[2,4,1,3,5]]out3

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.

Learn the concepts

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.