Allocate Minimum Pages Binary Search on Answer in DSA Javascript - Build from Scratch

Allocate Minimum Pages using Binary Search on Answer

📖 Scenario: You are a librarian who needs to allocate books to students. Each book has a certain number of pages. You want to distribute the books so that the student who reads the most pages reads as few pages as possible.This helps keep the reading load balanced and fair.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that finds the minimum possible maximum number of pages assigned to any student using binary search on the answer.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called books with the exact values [12, 34, 67, 90]

Create a variable called students and set it to 2

Write a function called isPossible that takes books, students, and mid as parameters and returns true if allocation is possible with max pages mid, otherwise false

Use binary search with variables start, end, and result to find the minimum maximum pages

Print the final result which is the minimum maximum pages any student has to read

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This technique helps in dividing workloads fairly, like assigning tasks or resources evenly among people.

💼 Career

Binary search on answer is a common pattern in coding interviews and helps solve optimization problems efficiently.

1

Create the books array

Create an array called books with these exact values: [12, 34, 67, 90]

DSA Javascript

# Create the array books with the given values
# Your code here

Hint

Use const books = [12, 34, 67, 90]; to create the array.

2

Set the number of students

Create a variable called students and set it to 2

DSA Javascript

const books = [12, 34, 67, 90];
# Create the variable students and set it to 2
# Your code here

Hint

Use const students = 2; to set the number of students.

3

Write the isPossible function

Write a function called isPossible that takes books, students, and mid as parameters. It should return true if it is possible to allocate books so that no student reads more than mid pages, otherwise false. Use a loop to sum pages and count students needed.

DSA Javascript

const books = [12, 34, 67, 90];
const students = 2;
// Write the isPossible function below
# Your code here

Hint

Loop through books, add pages to a sum. If sum exceeds mid, assign to next student. If students needed exceed students, return false.

4

Use binary search to find minimum maximum pages and print result

Use binary search with variables start, end, and result to find the minimum maximum pages any student has to read. Print the result.

DSA Javascript

const books = [12, 34, 67, 90];
const students = 2;

function isPossible(books, students, mid) {
    let studentCount = 1;
    let pagesSum = 0;
    for (let i = 0; i  mid) {
            return false;
        }
        if (pagesSum + books[i] > mid) {
            studentCount++;
            pagesSum = books[i];
            if (studentCount > students) {
                return false;
            }
        } else {
            pagesSum += books[i];
        }
    }
    return true;
}

// Use binary search to find minimum maximum pages and print result
# Your code here

Hint

Use binary search between 0 and sum of all pages. Use isPossible to check mid. Adjust start and end accordingly. Print final result.