Mike's Journal

Algorithms are used all over the place in tons of applications, but most of the time there is no dirrect proof that one is better than the other, and it all becomes muddled by the specifics of the individual application. Designing a great algorithm is an elegant dance of logic, creativity, and language. Learning how to create good ones is an art.

The goal is to make an efficient algorithm for matching two groups together. The simplest form of this problem, and thus the easiest example of it to explain, is where every one thing matches with only 1 thing, and there are an identical number of items on each side. For this example the book uses men and women getting engaged. The Book Presents the Gale and Shapely method for what a stable and unstable match is. An unstable match is one in which two sets of partners would rather be with the partner in the other group. There is then an algorithm presented to match men with women. This is followed by several pretty trivial proofs about the algorithm.

Graphs are good for representing pair-wise relationships. Five separate problems to get some experience with algorithms.

Problem: How do you schedule individual use of a popular resource. This problem is pretty simple to solve.

Problem: How do you schedule a resource which is in demand, given that individuals have a priority associated with them, to maximize the return. This is not as easy to solve as the non-weighted problem, but you can use dynamic programming.

Problem: When doing the matching problem using Bipartite graphs, the problem gets more difficult. You need to build your matching and then back track to confirm what is needed. Process is called augmentation, applicable in network flow problems.

Problem: given a graph, find the subgraph such that all nodes are independent. Finding independent sets and testing independent sets are very different, with one being very difficult, and the other being rather simple.

Problem: you have two players competing for owning a certain sum of weighted nodes with rules as to which can be adjacent, each picks nodes after the other, what's the best possible way to play the game to getting the largest sum?