I am able to get the correct answer however, when it comes to bigger input, my code still takes more than 5 seconds, I think this could be because I'm converting each element in an int first running a loop through it, correct me if I'm wrong.

"Mahit Gupta" <23*9*2*5@s*u*e*t*u*a*e*u*a*> wrote: Converting the input strings into ints (which is intended), would only take a single linear O(N) scan over the list. It would take this long to even read in the input, so that should not be the dominating factor. Some questions for you to consider that may help you: - How many inversions can there be in the worst case? - If you count inversions one at a time, how long will that take, therefore?