Code RoomMinimum bonus tokens
MediumPrep Room Coding #647

Minimum bonus tokens

CodingAlgorithms & data structuresEntry–Mid~16 min

People stand in a row and scores[i] is the i-th person's performance score. You hand out bonus tokens under two rules: everyone gets at least one token, and anyone whose score is strictly higher than an immediate neighbor's must receive more tokens than that neighbor. Return the minimum total number of tokens required. Example: scores [1, 0, 2] needs 5 tokens (2, 1, 2).

Implement
min_total_tokens(scores: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[1,0,2]]out5
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

0:00 of about 16 min
InputExpectedGot
[[1,0,2]]5not run yetsample