1681. Minimum Incompatibility

Problem

You are given an integer array nums​​​ and an integer k. You are asked to distribute this array into k subsets of equal size such that there are no two equal elements in the same subset.

A subset's incompatibility is the difference between the maximum and minimum elements in that array.

Return the minimum possible sum of incompatibilities of the k subsets after distributing the array optimally, or return -1 if it is not possible.

A subset is a group integers that appear in the array with no particular order.

 

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,1,4], k = 2
Output: 4
Explanation: The optimal distribution of subsets is [1,2] and [1,4].
The incompatibility is (2-1) + (4-1) = 4.
Note that [1,1] and [2,4] would result in a smaller sum, but the first subset contains 2 equal elements.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [6,3,8,1,3,1,2,2], k = 4
Output: 6
Explanation: The optimal distribution of subsets is [1,2], [2,3], [6,8], and [1,3].
The incompatibility is (2-1) + (3-2) + (8-6) + (3-1) = 6.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [5,3,3,6,3,3], k = 3
Output: -1
Explanation: It is impossible to distribute nums into 3 subsets where no two elements are equal in the same subset.

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= k <= nums.length <= 16
• nums.length is divisible by k
• 1 <= nums[i] <= nums.length