Would love for the author to revisit this course and update the content more frequently. An obviously more reasonable check would be
def overlap(interval_a, interval_b) -> bool:
return max(interval_a[0], interval_b[0]) <= min(interval_a[1], interval_b[1])
Without knowing how the intervals overlap, a condition must be met is: the start of the overlapped interval must be smaller or equal to its end.
Course: Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions - Learn Interactively
Lesson: Intervals Intersection (medium) - Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions