Find Top K Largest Numbers
Company: Microsoft
Role: Machine Learning Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: easy
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Given an unsorted array of integers `nums` and an integer `k`, return the `k` largest numbers in the array. The solution should use a heap rather than sorting the entire array.
You may return the result in any order.
Example:
- Input: `nums = [3, 1, 5, 12, 2, 11]`, `k = 3`
- Output: `[12, 11, 5]`
Discuss the expected time and space complexity of your approach.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency with heap/priority-queue data structures, selection algorithms, and the ability to analyze time and space complexity. It is commonly asked in the Coding & Algorithms domain to assess efficient selection method implementation and performance trade-off reasoning, testing practical application rather than purely conceptual understanding.