#### Approach #1: Dynamic Programming [Accepted]

Intuition

The best score partitioning A[i:] into at most K parts depends on answers to paritioning A[j:] (j > i) into less parts. We can use dynamic programming as the states form a directed acyclic graph.

Algorithm

Let dp(i, k) be the best score partioning A[i:] into at most K parts.

If the first group we partition A[i:] into ends before j, then our candidate partition has score average(i, j) + dp(j, k-1)), where average(i, j) = (A[i] + A[i+1] + ... + A[j-1]) / (j - i) (floating point division). We take the highest score of these, keeping in mind we don't necessarily need to partition - dp(i, k) can also be just average(i, N).

In total, our recursion in the general case is dp(i, k) = max(average(i, N), max_{j > i}(average(i, j) + dp(j, k-1))).

We can calculate average a little bit faster by remembering prefix sums. If P[x+1] = A[0] + A[1] + ... + A[x], then average(i, j) = (P[j] - P[i]) / (j - i).

Our implementation showcases a "bottom-up" style of dp. Here at loop number k in our outer-most loop, dp[i] represents dp(i, k) from the discussion above, and we are calculating the next layer dp(i, k+1). The end of our second loop for i = 0..N-1 represents finishing the calculation of the correct value for dp(i, t), and the inner-most loop performs the calculation max_{j > i}(average(i, j) + dp(j, k)).

Complexity Analysis

• Time Complexity: , where is the length of A.

• Space Complexity: , the size of dp.

Analysis written by: @awice.