Sliding Window on Arrays in DSA Python - Build from Scratch

Sliding Window on Arrays

📖 Scenario: You are analyzing daily temperatures for a week to find the hottest 3-day period.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that uses the sliding window technique to find the maximum sum of temperatures over any 3 consecutive days.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of daily temperatures for 7 days

Create a variable for the window size set to 3

Use a sliding window approach to find the maximum sum of any 3 consecutive days

Print the maximum sum found

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Analyzing temperature trends helps in weather forecasting and planning outdoor activities.

💼 Career

Sliding window technique is widely used in data analysis, signal processing, and performance optimization tasks.

1

Create the list of daily temperatures

Create a list called temperatures with these exact values: [30, 32, 31, 29, 35, 36, 33]

DSA Python

# Create the list of temperatures
# Your code here

Hint

Use square brackets and separate numbers with commas.

2

Set the window size

Create a variable called window_size and set it to 3

DSA Python

temperatures = [30, 32, 31, 29, 35, 36, 33]
# Set the window size to 3
# Your code here

Hint

Just assign the number 3 to the variable window_size.

3

Find the maximum sum of any 3 consecutive days using sliding window

Create a variable called max_sum and set it to the sum of the first 3 elements in temperatures. Then use a for loop with variable i from 1 to len(temperatures) - window_size to slide the window. Inside the loop, update current_sum by subtracting the element leaving the window and adding the new element entering the window. Update max_sum if current_sum is greater.

DSA Python

temperatures = [30, 32, 31, 29, 35, 36, 33]
window_size = 3
# Calculate max_sum using sliding window
# Your code here

Hint

Start with the sum of the first 3 days. Then slide the window by removing the first day and adding the next day in each step.

4

Print the maximum sum

Print the value of max_sum

DSA Python

temperatures = [30, 32, 31, 29, 35, 36, 33]
window_size = 3
max_sum = sum(temperatures[0:window_size])
current_sum = max_sum
for i in range(1, len(temperatures) - window_size + 1):
    current_sum = current_sum - temperatures[i - 1] + temperatures[i + window_size - 1]
    if current_sum > max_sum:
        max_sum = current_sum
# Print the maximum sum
# Your code here

Hint

Use print(max_sum) to show the result.