Compute Sliding Window Averages
Company: Meta
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: easy
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Given a list of numbers `nums` and a positive integer `window_size`, compute the average of every contiguous subarray of length `window_size`.
Return a list where each element is the average of one sliding window, in left-to-right order.
If `window_size` is greater than the length of `nums`, return an empty list.
Example:
- Input: `nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]`, `window_size = 3`
- Output: `[2.0, 3.0, 4.0]`
Explanation:
- Window `[1, 2, 3]` -> `2.0`
- Window `[2, 3, 4]` -> `3.0`
- Window `[3, 4, 5]` -> `4.0`
Design an efficient solution.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in array manipulation, sliding-window techniques, and algorithmic efficiency including time and space complexity. It is commonly asked in technical interviews within the Coding & Algorithms domain to probe practical implementation skills for contiguous-data processing, and the level of abstraction is practical application rather than purely conceptual understanding.