Greedy Strategy as an Algorithm Technique - Taking a Break
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We’ve come to the end of this segment. Throughout this article we covered the greedy algorithm design pattern. It is one of those algorithm techniques that are definitely useful to know, whether you're a student or an experienced software developer. You cannot know in advance when it will save your day.
As a summary of everything we have learned, it is especially important to realize that the collage of local optimums does not guarantee a global optimal solution. As a result, even if you do get a solution, you need to prove (mathematically) whether or not it’s optimal. Try more than a few input sources, with the hope that you won’t get a counter-example.
There are those algorithms that cannot be solved with a simple greedy algorithm. We call these heuristic solutions because they do not stand for a global, optimal, and perfect solution which could be found with an exhaustive backtracking algorithm or with dynamic programming (we are going to cover this later in this series).
But as we discussed earlier, sometimes we settle for heuristic greedy solutions because the resource requirements for a thorough and exhaustive algorithm might be huge. In these cases it is still worthwhile to implement and code a greedy algorithm because it runs fast and is highly resource efficient. We end up with a result as quickly as possible which is usually somewhat good. It may not be the best, but hey, we don't live in a perfect world.
Knowing all of this, we know when and how to use greedy algorithms. There are particular scenarios and as always, we need to fine-tune and customize everything to our needs. There is no general rule of thumb that applies to every problem. It all comes down to software requirements. You, as a programmer, need to know the alternatives and all of the possible solutions; then you pick the one that meets your needs!
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