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Dynamic Programming

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11 views

Dynamic Programming

Uploaded by

sara.lu.9210
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Dynamic Programming

In the fields of computer science, economics, managerial sciences, mathematics and


bioinformatics, dynamic programming or dynamic optimization is similar to divide-and-conquer
principle as to decompose a complex problem into smaller sub-problems.

Fundamental Idea
In contrast to the paradigm of DnC that sub-problems are independent, dynamic programming is
adopted to solve interleaved sub-problems wherein multiple sub-problems might have common
smaller sub-problems. And for each repetitive sub-problem, dynamic programming would store
and reuse the solution when it was solved the first time (also known as memoization),
programming solutions all together.

The typical dynamic programming algorithm is developed in steps follow:

1. Characterize the optimal sub-structures along with possible moves. (think of it as finding
a DAG for a solution path)
2. Define the recurrence relations of sub-problems.
3. Compute recursively or iteratively in a bottom-up fashion or top-down with memoization
fashion.
4. Construct an overall optimal solution or combining solutions of sub-problems.

Noted that the word programming does not stand for computer programming but a tabulation
method that was invented by R. Bellman.

Comparing with Greedy Algorithms


It is often confusing to determine if the programming logic is built on dynamic programming or
greedy algorithms. Both are adopted in favor of tackling optimization problem, and dynamic
programming seeks and combines the previous solutions for sub-problems to yield the final
result while greedy algorithms chooses locally optimal solution in each run and not guarantee to
have the optimal result.

For instance, in a coin change problem of finding a minimum number of coins with certain
denominations added up to a specified amount, dynamic programming is a killer solution than
using greedy algorithms in that:

given a set of denominations: 1, 4, 5, 15, 20 and the specified amount 23; the dynamic
programming would yield an optimal solution of 15 + 4 + 4 while the greedy algorithms offers a
non-optimal one 20 + 1 + 1 + 1.
wherein, greedy algorithms picks the largest one in the set of coins from the first run; dynamic
programming takes into account the solutions to each small sub-problem that are related to each
other during iterations.

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