This problem (reportedly) took Don Knuth, 24 hours to solve

  • I don't know what was Knuth's solution, but it's trivial:

       (- (reduce '+ vector)
          (let ((n (- (length vector) 2)))
            (/ (* n (+ n 1)) 2)))
    
    reduce is O(n) time and O(1) space. length is O(1) time and space.

    Notice also that if there are no duplicates, this formula will give the maximum element (- (length vector) 1).