11. H-Index – LeetCode 274 📊 Brute Force vs Optimized Counting Approach | Clean & Intuitive!

In this episode of the LeetCode Top Interview 150 series, we’re decoding the H-Index problem — a classic academic-metrics challenge that blends counting logic with clever iteration.

You’ll walk through two crisp approaches:

🔹 1. Brute Force (Descending H Simulation)
We iterate possible H values from n down to 0, checking how many papers have citations ≥ H.
A simple, highly readable way to ground your understanding.

🔹 2. Optimized Counting Array (O(n))
Instead of sorting, we build a frequency map of citation counts and accumulate from the back to detect the highest valid H-Index.
This is the interviewer-friendly technique that avoids extra sorting cost and scales beautifully.

Both approaches sharpen your intuition for frequency-based algorithms and decision-driven iteration — powerful patterns across many LeetCode problems.

Stay tuned for more LeetCode 150 explanations!

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