Minimum Cost to Move Chips to The Same Position

Problem Statement - link #

We have n chips, where the position of the ith chip is position[i].

We need to move all the chips to the same position. In one step, we can change the position of the ith chip from position[i] to:

• position[i] + 2 or position[i] - 2 with cost = 0.
• position[i] + 1 or position[i] - 1 with cost = 1.

Return the minimum cost needed to move all the chips to the same position.

Examples #

Example 1:

Input: position = [1,2,3]
Output: 1
Explanation: First step: Move the chip at position 3 to position 1 with cost = 0.
Second step: Move the chip at position 2 to position 1 with cost = 1.
Total cost is 1.

Example 2:

Input: position = [2,2,2,3,3]
Output: 2
Explanation: We can move the two chips at position  3 to position 2. Each move has cost = 1. The total cost = 2.

Example 3:

Input: position = [1,1000000000]
Output: 1

Constraints #

• 1 <= position.length <= 100
• 1 <= position[i] <= 10^9

Solutions #

class Solution {
public:
    int minCostToMoveChips(vector<int>& position) {
     int o = 0, e = 0;
     for(auto i: position) if(i%2==0) e++; else o++;
     return min(o,e);
    }
};