K Closest Points to Origin | Dataford Interview Questions

In a Meta-style ranking or retrieval pipeline, you may need to quickly keep only the nearest candidate embeddings or coordinates. Given a list of points on a 2D plane, return the k points closest to the origin (0, 0).

The distance between a point (x, y) and the origin is sqrt(x^2 + y^2). For efficiency, compare points using squared distance x^2 + y^2 instead of computing square roots. You may return the answer in any order.

Formal Specification

Input:
- points: a list of 2-element lists, where each element is [x, y]
- k: an integer
Output:
- A list containing exactly k points from points with the smallest distances to the origin

Constraints

1 <= len(points) <= 10^4
-10^4 <= x, y <= 10^4
1 <= k <= len(points)
Each point contains exactly two integers

Function Signature

def k_closest_points(points, k):

Your question is K Closest Points to Origin. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Formal Specification

Input:
- points: a list of 2-element lists, where each element is [x, y]
- k: an integer
Output:
- A list containing exactly k points from points with the smallest distances to the origin

Constraints

1 <= len(points) <= 10^4
-10^4 <= x, y <= 10^4
1 <= k <= len(points)
Each point contains exactly two integers

Function Signature

def k_closest_points(points, k):

Your question is K Closest Points to Origin. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.