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homework II problems
1. Suppose all the books have the same height h and the shelves are all separated by a distance
of greater than h, so any book fits on any shelf. The greedy algorithm would fill the first shelf
with as many books as we can until we get the smallest i such that bi does not fit, and then
repeat with the subsequent shelves. Show that the greedy algorithm always finds the optimal
shelf placement, and analyze its time complexity.
2. Now consider the case where the height of the books is not constant, but we have the freedom
to adjust the height of each shelf to that of the tallest book on the shelf. Thus the cost of a
particular layout is the sum of the heights of the largest book on each shelf. Give an example
to show that the greedy algorithm of stuffing each shelf as full as possible does not always
give the minimum overall height.
Give an algorithm for this problem, and analyze its time complexity.
1
We are given an array P of real numbers V [1..n]. We wish to find a subset of array positions,
S ⊆ [1...n] that maximizes i∈S V [i] subject to no two consecutive array positions being in S. For
example, say V = [10, 14, 12, 6, 13, 4], the best solution is to take elements 1, 3, 5 to get a total of
10 + 12 + 13 = 35. If instead, we try to take the 14 in position 2, we must exclude the 10 and 12 in
positions 1 and 3, leaving us with the second best choice 2, 5 giving a total of 14 + 13 = 27.