COP 4531: Lecture 18

Learning objectives

After this class, you should be able to:

1. Prove optimal substructure properties for the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem, and for other similar problems.
2. Give a recursive solution for the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem, and for other similar problems.
3. Give a dynamic programming solution for the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem, and for other similar problems.

Reading assignment

1. CLR: Section 15.4.
2. CLR: Chapter 16, page 371.

Exercises and review questions

• Questions on current lecture's material
  1. Exercise 15.4-1.
  2. Exercise 15.4-2.
  3. (Optional) You can find a database of mitochondrial DNA sequences -- human and ape -- at www.genpat.uu.se/mtDB. You can try to compare the sequences and see which ones are close.

• Questions on next lecture's material
  1. (Post your solution on the discussion board) Give an example of an activity-selection problem instance with at least five activities, and give a solution (not-necessarily optimal, but having at least two activities) to it.