Programming Praxis

Today’s exercise is an interview question from Amazon:

You are given an array of integers, not necessarily unique. Your goal is to transform the array of integers so that the smallest number does not differ from the largest number by more than two times by removing integers from the array; thus, if x is the smallest element in the array, and y is the largest, then y ≤ 2x. You need only find the number of items to be removed from the array, not make a list of the items. As an example, given the array [4,5,3,8,3,7], you can remove the 2 smallest integers, leaving [4,5,7,8], so that 8 ≤ 2 × 4, or you can remove the 2 largest integers, leaving [3,4,5,6], so that 5 ≤ 2 × 3.

Your task is to write a function to determine how many items to remove from the array. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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