Find the year with the most number of people alive in Python

Question

Given a list of people with their birth and end years (all between 1900 and 2000), find the year with the most number of people alive.

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Answer 1

We can also use numpy slicing, which is quite neat, and should also be quite efficient:

import numpy as np
from collections import namedtuple

Person = namedtuple('Person', ('birth', 'death'))
people = [Person(1900,2000), Person(1950,1960), Person(1955, 1959)]

START_YEAR = 1900
END_YEAR = 2000
people_alive = np.zeros(END_YEAR - START_YEAR + 1) # Alive each year

for p in people:
    a = p.birth - START_YEAR
    b = p.death - START_YEAR + 1 # include year of death
    people_alive[a:b] += 1

# Find indexes of maximum aliveness and convert to year
most_alive = np.flatnonzero(people_alive == people_alive.max()) + START_YEAR

EDIT It seems like the namedtuple adds a bit of overhead, so to speed up a bit more, remove the namedtuple and do for birth, death in people: instead.