Counting inversions in an array

Question

I\'m designing an algorithm to do the following: Given array A[1... n], for every i < j, find all inversion pairs such that A[i] > A[j]

Answer 1

My answer in Python:

1- Sort the Array first and make a copy of it. In my program, B represents the sorted array. 2- Iterate over the original array (unsorted), and find the index of that element on the sorted list. Also note down the index of the element. 3- Make sure the element doesn't have any duplicates, if it has then you need to change the value of your index by -1. The while condition in my program is exactly doing that. 4- Keep counting the inversion that will your index value, and remove the element once you have calculated its inversion.

def binarySearch(alist, item):
    first = 0
    last = len(alist) - 1
    found = False

    while first <= last and not found:
        midpoint = (first + last)//2
        if alist[midpoint] == item:
            return midpoint
        else:
            if item < alist[midpoint]:
                last = midpoint - 1
            else:
                first = midpoint + 1

def solution(A):

    B = list(A)
    B.sort()
    inversion_count = 0
    for i in range(len(A)):
        j = binarySearch(B, A[i])
        while B[j] == B[j - 1]:
            if j < 1:
                break
            j -= 1

        inversion_count += j
        B.pop(j)

    if inversion_count > 1000000000:
        return -1
    else:
        return inversion_count

print solution([4, 10, 11, 1, 3, 9, 10])