Max Points With Category Constraints | Dataford Interview Questions

Meta AI is evaluating a reading list where each book has a category and a recommendation-point value. Given a dictionary of books, choose exactly three books whose categories are all different and return the maximum total points.

Formal Specification

Implement max_points_three_categories(books). The input books is a dictionary mapping a unique book ID to a dictionary with two fields: category, a string, and points, an integer. The function must return an integer representing the greatest possible sum of points from three books with pairwise-distinct categories. You may not select the same book more than once.

The input always contains at least three distinct categories, so a valid selection exists. The result depends only on the highest-point book in each category.

Constraints

3 <= len(books) <= 10^6
Each book ID is unique
Each category is a non-empty string
-10^9 <= points <= 10^9
At least three distinct categories exist

Function Signature

def max_points_three_categories(books):

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