Efficient Cosine Similarity | Dataford Interview Questions

Implement a function to calculate the cosine similarity of two high-dimensional vectors efficiently.

The function receives two equal-length lists of real numbers and returns their cosine similarity as a floating-point number. Handle either zero vector by returning 0.0. Use a single traversal and avoid constructing normalized copies.

Function Contract

cosine_similarity(vector_a, vector_b) returns a float in [-1.0, 1.0].

Constraints

1 <= len(vector_a) = len(vector_b) <= 10000
Each vector element is a finite real number
Return 0.0 if either vector is a zero vector

Function Signature

def cosine_similarity(vector_a, vector_b):

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