Grokking Algorithms, Second Edition

10 Greedy algorithms

In this chapter

• You learn about the greedy strategy, a very simple problem-solving strategy.
• You learn how to cope with the impossible: problems that have no fast algorithmic solution (NP-hard problems).
• You learn about approximation algorithms, which you can use to find an approximate solution to an NP-hard problem quickly.
• You learn about the greedy strategy, a very simple problem-solving strategy.

The classroom scheduling problem

Suppose you have a classroom and want to hold as many classes here as possible. You get a list of classes.

You can’t hold all of these classes in there because some of them overlap.