Min Heap vs Max Heap When to Use Which in DSA Go - Interactive Comparison Practice

Practice - 5 Tasks

1fill in blank

easy

Complete the code to create a min heap by choosing the correct comparison operator.

DSA Go

func (h MinHeap) Less(i, j int) bool {
    return h[i] [1] h[j]
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A>

B!=

C==

D<

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using > instead of < causes a max heap behavior.

Using == or != does not define order.

In a min heap, the parent node is smaller than its children, so we use the less than operator < to compare.

2fill in blank

medium

Complete the code to create a max heap by choosing the correct comparison operator.

DSA Go

func (h MaxHeap) Less(i, j int) bool {
    return h[i] [1] h[j]
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A>

B==

C<

D!=

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using < instead of > causes a min heap behavior.

Using == or != does not define order.

In a max heap, the parent node is greater than its children, so we use the greater than operator > to compare.

3fill in blank

hard

Fix the error in the code to pop the root element from a min heap.

DSA Go

func (h *MinHeap) Pop() interface{} {
    old := *h
    n := len(old)
    x := old[[1]]
    *h = old[0 : n-1]
    return x
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

An-1

B0

Cn

D1

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using n or n-1 causes out of range or wrong element removal.

Using 1 removes the second element, not the root.

The root element of a heap is always at index 0, so we pop old[0].

4fill in blank

hard

Fill both blanks to build a min heap from a slice of integers.

DSA Go

h := MinHeap[1]
heap.Init(&h)
return h[2]

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A{data}

Bdata

C&h

D*h

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using &h instead of data causes type mismatch.

Returning &h instead of h returns a pointer, not the struct.

We assign the slice 'data' to the heap struct and return the heap struct with the data inside curly braces.

5fill in blank

hard

Fill all three blanks to push a new value into a max heap and maintain heap property.

DSA Go

func (h *MaxHeap) Push(x interface{}) {
    *h = append(*h, [1])
    heap.[2](h)
}

func (h *MaxHeap) Pop() interface{} {
    old := *h
    n := len(old)
    x := old[[3]]
    *h = old[0 : n-1]
    return x
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

Ax

BFix

C0

DPush

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Appending wrong variable or calling heap.Fix instead of heap.Push.

Popping element at wrong index.

We append the new value x, then call heap.Push to maintain the heap property, and pop the root at index 0.