Lecture 7:

Greedy Algorithms II

Shang-Hua Teng
 Greedy algorithms
• A greedy algorithm always makes the choice that
looks best at the moment
– My everyday examples:
• Driving in Los Angeles, NY, or Boston for that matter
• Playing cards
• Invest on stocks
• Choose a university
– The hope: a locally optimal choice will lead to a globally
optimal solution
– For some problems, it works
• greedy algorithms tend to be easier to code
 An Activity Selection Problem
(Conference Scheduling Problem)
• Input: A set of activities S = {a1,…, an}
• Each activity has start time and a finish time
– ai=(si, fi)
• Two activities are compatible if and only if
their interval does not overlap
• Output: a maximum-size subset of
mutually compatible activities
 The Activity Selection Problem
• Here are a set of start and finish times

• What is the maximum number of activities that can be

completed?
• {a3, a9, a11} can be completed
• But so can {a1, a4, a8’ a11} which is a larger set
• But it is not unique, consider {a2, a4, a9’ a11}
Interval Representation
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
 Early Finish Greedy
• Select the activity with the earliest finish
• Eliminate the activities that could not be
scheduled
• Repeat!
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Assuming activities are sorted by
finish time
 Why it is Greedy?
• Greedy in the sense that it leaves as much
opportunity as possible for the remaining
activities to be scheduled
• The greedy choice is the one that
maximizes the amount of unscheduled time
remaining
 Why this Algorithm is Optimal?
• We will show that this algorithm uses the
following properties
• The problem has the optimal substructure
property
• The algorithm satisfies the greedy-choice
property
• Thus, it is Optimal
 Greedy-Choice Property
• Show there is an optimal solution that begins with a greedy
choice (with activity 1, which as the earliest finish time)
• Suppose A  S in an optimal solution
– Order the activities in A by finish time. The first activity in A is k
• If k = 1, the schedule A begins with a greedy choice
• If k  1, show that there is an optimal solution B to S that begins with the
greedy choice, activity 1
– Let B = A – {k}  {1}
• f1  fk  activities in B are disjoint (compatible)
• B has the same number of activities as A
• Thus, B is optimal
 Optimal Substructures
– Once the greedy choice of activity 1 is made, the problem
reduces to finding an optimal solution for the activity-selection
problem over those activities in S that are compatible with
activity 1
• Optimal Substructure
• If A is optimal to S, then A’ = A – {1} is optimal to S’={i S: si  f1}
• Why?
– If we could find a solution B’ to S’ with more activities than A’, adding
activity 1 to B’ would yield a solution B to S with more activities than A
 contradicting the optimality of A
– After each greedy choice is made, we are left with an
optimization problem of the same form as the original problem
• By induction on the number of choices made, making the greedy choice
at every step produces an optimal solution
 Elements of Greedy Strategy
• An greedy algorithm makes a sequence of choices, each
of the choices that seems best at the moment is chosen
– NOT always produce an optimal solution
• Two ingredients that are exhibited by most problems
that lend themselves to a greedy strategy
– Greedy-choice property
– Optimal substructure
 Greedy-Choice Property
• A globally optimal solution can be arrived at by
making a locally optimal (greedy) choice
– Make whatever choice seems best at the moment and
then solve the sub-problem arising after the choice is
made
– The choice made by a greedy algorithm may depend on
choices so far, but it cannot depend on any future
choices or on the solutions to sub-problems
• Of course, we must prove that a greedy choice at
each step yields a globally optimal solution
 Optimal Substructures
• A problem exhibits optimal substructure if an
optimal solution to the problem contains
within it optimal solutions to sub-problems
– If an optimal solution A to S begins with activity
1, then A’ = A – {1} is optimal to S’={i S: si 
f1}
 Knapsack Problem
• One wants to pack n items in a luggage
– The ith item is worth vi dollars and weighs wi pounds
– Maximize the value but cannot exceed W pounds
– vi , wi, W are integers
• 0-1 knapsack  each item is taken or not taken
• Fractional knapsack  fractions of items can be taken
• Both exhibit the optimal-substructure property
– 0-1: If item j is removed from an optimal packing, the remaining
packing is an optimal packing with weight at most W-wj
– Fractional: If w pounds of item j is removed from an optimal
packing, the remaining packing is an optimal packing with weight at
most W-w that can be taken from other n-1 items plus wj – w of item
j
 Greedy Algorithm for Fractional
Knapsack problem
• Fractional knapsack can be solvable by the greedy
strategy
– Compute the value per pound vi/wi for each item
– Obeying a greedy strategy, take as much as possible of the
item with the greatest value per pound.
– If the supply of that item is exhausted and there is still more
room, take as much as possible of the item with the next value
per pound, and so forth until there is no more room
– O(n lg n) (we need to sort the items by value per pound)
– Greedy Algorithm?
– Correctness?
 O-1 knapsack is harder!
• 0-1 knapsack cannot be solved by the greedy
strategy
– Unable to fill the knapsack to capacity, and the empty
space lowers the effective value per pound of the
packing
– We must compare the solution to the sub-problem in
which the item is included with the solution to the sub-
problem in which the item is excluded before we can
make the choice
– Dynamic Programming
 Next Week
• Dynamic programming
 Optimal substructures
• Define the following subset of activities which are activities that can start after ai finishes and finish before aj starts

• Sort the activities according to finish time

• We now define the the maximal set of activities from i to j as

• Let c[i,j] be the maximal number of activities

• Our recurrence relation for finding c[i, j] becomes

• We can solve this using dynamic programming, but a simpler

approach exists