ould be the elements 42, 13 and 5. Before starting to write code for this function, you should consult the parable of "Shlemiel the painter" and think how this seemingly silly tale from a simpler time relates to today's computational problems performed on lists, strings and other sequences. This problem will be the fi

Database System Concepts
7th Edition
ISBN:9780078022159
Author:Abraham Silberschatz Professor, Henry F. Korth, S. Sudarshan
Publisher:Abraham Silberschatz Professor, Henry F. Korth, S. Sudarshan
Chapter1: Introduction
Section: Chapter Questions
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Count dominators

def count_dominators(items):

An element of items is said to be a dominator if every element to its right (not just the one element that is immediately to its right) is strictly smaller than it. By this definition, the last item of the list is automatically a dominator. This function should count how many elements in items are dominators, and return that count. For example, dominators of [42, 7, 12, 9, 13, 5] would be the elements 42, 13 and 5.

Before starting to write code for this function, you should consult the parable of "Shlemiel the painter" and think how this seemingly silly tale from a simpler time relates to today's computational problems performed on lists, strings and other sequences. This problem will be the first of many that you will encounter during and after this course to illustrate the important principle of using only one loop to achieve in a tiny fraction of time the same end result that Shlemiel achieves with two nested loops. Your workload therefore increases only linearly with respect to the number of items, whereas the total time of Shlemiel’s back-and-forth grows quadratically, that is, as a function of the square of the number of items.

items

Expected result

[42, 7, 12, 9, 2, 5]

4

[]

0

[99]

1

[42, 42, 42, 42]

1

range(10**7)

1

range(10**7, 0, -1)

10000000

Trying to hide the inner loop of some Shlemiel algorithm inside a function call (this includes Python built-ins such as max and list slicing) will only summon the Gods of Compubook Headings to return with tumult to claim their lion's share of execution time.

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