[Chicago] The KnapSack problem.

[Lewit, Douglas]

Hi guys,

Here's my brute-force solution to the knapsack problem.  I like it!  The
running time I think is O(2**n) where n is the number of items, so if you
plan to stuff like 30 or more items in your knapsack then my algorithm may
not provide a very fast, efficient approach!  But for smaller problems the
running time should not be that bad.

I know somebody on the list wrote, "For the love of other developers,
please use 4 spaces!"  Well, I wish I could be accommodating, but.... I'm
not a big fan of just 4 spaces!!!  I gotta have 6 spaces at least.  Don't
know why!  Maybe there's something wrong with my eyes, right?

This was actually a problem on my Algorithms final at Northeastern.  (But
we had to write our code in Java, and we couldn't test it on a computer.
Just our best handwritten approximation of the correct code.)

Just sharing this with everyone on the list.  I hope the feedback is good!
If not, well.... you can't complain about the price cause it's FREE!!!
LOL!!!

By the way, on a totally different subject here, have you noticed that a
lot of CS professors think that all their students are plagiarists,
downloading all their program files from Github and StackOverflow?  I gotta
say that this attitude is really offensive to me because I don't steal
other people's programs.  I write my own!  I've got a couple friends in
other states with PhD's (both in mathematics) and I have heard plenty of
stories about professors guilty of plagiarism, stealing work from graduate
students and research assistants and then taking all the credit for it.  I
heard a similar story from a guy who was a graduate history major at DePaul
a long time ago.  He told me that some academics that he worked with at
DePaul were absolutely ruthless, and thought it was perfectly okay to take
credit for the work of graduate students and research assistants!  I just
get tired of professors who imply that their students are all a big bunch
of thieves and plagiarists.  I'm sure it happens, but I doubt if it happens
with any great regularity.  What do you think?

By the way, I'm pretty sure that the famous KNAPSACK PROBLEM is really a
special type of linear programming problem that has integer constraints.
Linear programming is definitely pretty interesting, but some of the
algorithms can get kind of rough and intimidating.  But I have heard that
the algorithms of linear programming and operations research in general are
extremely important in business and economics.

Have a fun and fabulous weekend!

Kind regards,

Douglas Lewit
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