Dispersing points on intervals

Abstract We consider a problem of dispersing points on disjoint intervals on a line. Given n pairwise disjoint intervals sorted on a line, we want to find a point in each interval such that the minimum pairwise distance of these points is maximized. Based on a greedy strategy, we present a linear time algorithm for the problem. Further, we also solve in linear time the cycle version of the problem where the intervals are given on a cycle.

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