[Coin-discuss] A little question

[Brady Hunsaker]

Ran,

At this time I don't know of any COIN-OR software (or any open-source
software) that provides a general dynamic programming method.  In fact,
my sense is that dynamic programming implementations usually take
advantage of the specific details of their problem, so it may not even
make sense to have a "general" dynamic programming tool.  I'm not sure,
but certainly I don't know of any.

You are correct that COIN-OR tools currently are aimed primarily at
operations researchers who are familiar with the techniques that are
implemented and have some coding proficiency.  Although we hope to make
better documentation in the future, it will probably always be best to
learn about the techniques elsewhere before attempting to use COIN-OR tools.

For mathematical programming, one on-line starting point is the
Wikipedia definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_programming
Note that this term is not directly related to "computer programming",
but means something quite different.

Brady


Ran Naot wrote:
> Hello, 
> 
> My name is Ran and I stumble upon this amazing site just now. 
> I am a student of industrial engineer in Israel and I am not familiar
> with all the term and knowledge you present on this site.
> 
> Please excuse my stupid questions for my level as programming is low
> and I never worked outside the windows base and java environment. I
> know the theory pretty well, I have good modeling abilities but as a
> programmer I am unexperienced.
> 
> I came to this site after I took on myself a Small assignment to solve
> and program a Dynamic Programming problem using successive
> approximation.
> 
> I never wrote a DP problem before and I thought to myself "why should
> I do so?" The problem is pretty compound and it holds a DP within a
> DP... If I am too blurry what I mean is that I have to call and use
> the DP algorithm with different vars (same structure and functions) a
> lot of times along the solution.
> 
> I thought I might find an application for windows that is free that
> has an API that I can tap into so my algorithm will use it to solve
> the simple DP problems I will sent to it. I have Lindo installed but
> it didn't had a lot of data regarding it's DP abilities on the help
> file.
> 
> I think I got into the right place, but seems like - all is for unix,
> that the explanation and usage is for pro-programmers only and I
> failed to understand if you have a DP solver on hand or not...
> 
> I myself never wrote Mathematical programming before - is it an hard
> thing to do?
> Should I know something unique about it before starting programming it?
> can I use windows base java to call api's of programs written in other lang? 
> 
> I appreciate if you find the time to answer me, 
> Anyhow seems like this site has a lot of knowledge to offer, 
> I will be glad to share mine if needed, 
> My main thees includes using a genetic algorithms to solve a np-hard
> deterministic scheduling problem from large scales.
> 
> Thanks in advance, 
> Ran Naot.
> 
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-- 
Brady Hunsaker
Assistant Professor
Industrial Engineering
University of Pittsburgh
http://www.engr.pitt.edu/hunsaker/