Knapsack Problem

What is Knapsack Problem?? --Look at the picture! How to optimize something that you have?...

The knapsack problem or rucksack problem is a problem in combinatorial optimization: Given a set of items, each with a weight and a value, determine the number of each item to include in a collection so that the total weight is less than or equal to a given limit and the total value is as large as possible. It derives its name from the problem faced by someone who is constrained by a fixed-size knapsack and must fill it with the most valuable items.


Example of a one-dimensional (constraint) knapsack problem: which boxes should be chosen to maximize the amount of money while still keeping the overall weight under or equal to 15 kg? A multiple constrained problem could consider both the weight and volume of the boxes.
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(Solution: if any number of each box is available, then three yellow boxes and three grey boxes; if only the shown boxes are available, then all but the green box.)


Computational Complexity
The knapsack problem is interesting from the perspective of computer science for many reasons:

• The decision problem form of the knapsack problem (Can a value of at least V be achieved without exceeding the weight W?) is NP-complete, thus there is no known algorithm both correct and fast (polynomial-time) on all cases.
• While the decision problem is NP-complete the optimization problem is NP-hard, its resolution is at least as difficult as the decision problem, and there is no known polynomial algorithm which can tell, given a solution, whether it is optimal (which would mean that there is no solution with a larger, thus solving the decision problem NP-complete).
• There is a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm using dynamic programming.

• There is a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme, which uses the pseudo-polynomial time algorithm as a subroutine, described below.

• Many cases that arise in practice, and "random instances" from some distributions, can nonetheless be solved exactly.

There is a link between the "decision" and "optimization" problems in that if there exists a polynomial algorithm that solves the "decision" problem, then one can find the maximum value for the optimization problem in polynomial time by applying this algorithm iteratively while increasing the value of k . On the other hand, if an algorithm finds the optimal value of optimization problem in polynomial time, then the decision problem can be solved in polynomial time by comparing the value of the solution output by this algorithm with the value of k . Thus, both versions of the problem are of similar difficulty.