Heaps and Priority Queues - The Swiss Army Knife of Interviews

Public lesson preview

Master heaps, the priority queue abstraction, and classic patterns like top-K problems and merging sorted lists.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will understand:

• ✓What Is a Heap?
• ✓Min-Heap vs Max-Heap
• ✓Insert and Extract - Step by Step
• ✓Heapify - Building a Heap in O(n)
• ✓The Priority Queue Abstraction

Lesson outline

1. What Is a Heap?
2. Min-Heap vs Max-Heap
3. Insert and Extract - Step by Step
4. Heapify - Building a Heap in O(n)
5. The Priority Queue Abstraction
6. Pattern: Top-K Problems
7. Pattern: Merge K Sorted Lists
8. Pattern: Median from Data Stream
9. Scheduling Problems
10. When to Use Heap vs Sorted Array vs BST
11. Complexity Cheat Sheet
12. 📚 Further Reading