In computer science, there are problems that taunt and mock you: the brain mutilating vortex of a difficult recurrence, a sprawling parallel algorithm, anything that almost but doesn’t quite work out, ...

The "knapsack problem" is a widespread computing challenge—and no, it doesn't have to do just with literal backpacks. golubovy / iStock Imagine you’re a thief robbing a museum exhibit of tantalizing ...

The unbounded knapsack problem: given a knapsack of some capacity and a set of items that have a weight and a value, determine the maximum value of items you can place in your knapsack. The number of ...