Subset sum problem

The subset sum problem (SSP) is a decision problem in computer science. In its most general formulation, there is a multiset of integers and a target-sum , and the question is to decide whether any subset of the integers sum to precisely . The problem is known to be NP-complete. Moreover, some restricted variants of it are NP-complete too, for example: SSP can also be regarded as an optimization problem: find a subset whose sum is at most T, and subject to that, as close as possible to T. It is NP-hard, but there are several algorithms that can solve it reasonably quickly in practice.

Subset sum problem

The subset sum problem (SSP) is a decision problem in computer science. In its most general formulation, there is a multiset of integers and a target-sum , and the question is to decide whether any subset of the integers sum to precisely . The problem is known to be NP-complete. Moreover, some restricted variants of it are NP-complete too, for example: SSP can also be regarded as an optimization problem: find a subset whose sum is at most T, and subject to that, as close as possible to T. It is NP-hard, but there are several algorithms that can solve it reasonably quickly in practice.