Easy Strong Permutation
Practice
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Easy
Greedy algorithms
Problem
44% Success 4204 Attempts 20 Points 1s Time Limit 256MB Memory 1024 KB Max Code
Kevin has a sequence of integers a1, a2, ..., an. Define the strength of the sequence to be
|a1 - a2| + |a2 - a3| + ... + |an-1 - an| + |an - a1|.
Kevin wants to make his sequence stronger, so he reorders his sequence into a new sequence b1, b2, ..., bn. He wants this new sequence to be as strong as possible. What is the largest possible strength of the resulting sequence?
Input
The input consists of 2 lines. The first line has a positive integer n. The second line contains the n integers a1, a2, ..., an.
Output
Output a single integer: the maximum possible strength.
Constraints
1 <= n <= 105.
|ai| <= 109. Note that ai can be negative.
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