Even-Odd Balance
In Even-Odd Balance, you’re analyzing a stack of spending receipts. Your job is to determine how the group of even amounts compares to the group of odd amounts by computing the Difference between their totals. The result can be positive, negative, or zero depending on which group dominates the week's transactions.
The "secret sauce" here is Parity Aggregation. Iterate through the list, adding every even number to one bucket and every odd number to another. Finally, subtract the odd total from the even total. If the result is 10, the even pile outweighed the odd by ten! Empty lists start at zero, and negative values (like refunds) follow the same parity rules. This measurement quickly highlights the spending pattern for any period in a single number. It’s a great way to practice simple filtering and mapping techniques for real-world financial data audits!
Keep the algorithm focused on one clear invariant and update path so correctness is easy to verify from left to right. This reduces accidental branching errors and helps ensure the final output stays consistent with the problem contract across random and adversarial test shapes.
Examples
Even sum = 16, odd sum = 4, balance = 12.
Even sum = 8, odd sum = 8, balance = 0.
Even sum = 6, odd sum = 9, balance = -3.
Algorithm Flow

Best Answers
class Solution {
public int even_odd_balance(int[] nums) {
int evenSum = 0, oddSum = 0;
for (int n : nums) {
if (n % 2 == 0) evenSum += n;
else oddSum += n;
}
return evenSum - oddSum;
}
}Comments (0)
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