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Alex Rivera
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This is a homework question, binary search has already been introduced: Given two arrays, respectively N and M elements in ascending order, not necessarily unique: What is a time efficient algorithm to find the k th smallest element in the union of both arrays? They say it takes O(logN + logM) where N and M are the arrays lengths. Let's name the arrays a and b . Obviously we can ignore all a[i] and b[i] where i > k. First let's compare a[k/2] and b[k/2] . Let b[k/2] > a[k/2] . Therefore we can discard also all b[i] , where i > k/2. Now we have all a[i] , where i < k and all b[i] , where i < k/2 to find the answer. What is the next step?
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