Find minimum cost in interval list
Last updated: February 12, 2026
Quick Overview
Given a list of intervals, each defined by a start and end time along with a cost, write a function to determine the minimum total cost to cover all intervals without overlap. The function should take a list of tuples, where each tuple contains three integers representing the start time, end time, and cost of each interval, and return the minimum cost as an integer. The solution should efficiently handle overlapping intervals and utilize appropriate algorithms to ensure optimal performance.
JPMorgan
February 12, 202648
5
3,992 solved
Given a list of intervals, each defined by a start and end time along with a cost, write a function to determine the minimum total cost to cover all intervals without overlap. The function should take a list of tuples, where each tuple contains three integers representing the start time, end time, and cost of each interval, and return the minimum cost as an integer. The solution should efficiently handle overlapping intervals and utilize appropriate algorithms to ensure optimal performance.
This coding problem is frequently asked during Phone Screen at JPMorgan. The interviewer is testing your ability to translate a problem into clean, working code while discussing time and space complexity. JPMorgan expects candidates to write production-quality code, not just solve the puzzle.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Quickly identify the optimal approach and its theoretical basis
- Handle complex algorithm design with multiple interacting components
- Write concise, elegant code under time pressure
- Prove correctness of your approach and discuss alternative solutions
- Optimize beyond the obvious: discuss constant factor improvements
- Address follow-up variations and explain how the solution generalizes
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- Can you solve this in a single pass?
- How would you test this solution thoroughly?
- What is the worst-case input for your solution?
- Can you optimize the space complexity of your solution?
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Problem Analysis
To solve the problem of finding the minimum total cost to cover all intervals without overlap, we identify that this is a classic interval scheduling problem with a cost associated with each interval....
Approach
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Input Parsing: Read the list of tuples containing start time, end time, and cost for each interval.
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Sorting: Sort the intervals based on their end times. This helps in efficiently findi...
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