

Your Favorite NP-Complete Cheat - bdfh42
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001187.html

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sdp
My favorite NP-Complete Cheat: using A* heuristic search to find a solution in
the graph of possible Rubik's cube configurations.

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lliiffee
My favorite NP-complete cheat: You want to solve an integer programming
problem, something like

    
    
      max sum_i x_i f_i
    

Where the x_i are restricted to be binary. The cheat: Just let the x_i be real
numbers in the [0,1] interval, and solve the problem through a super-efficient
linear programming solver. _If you happen_ to end up with a solution where all
the x_i are binary, you have successfully found a solution to the original
problem. If you aren't so lucky, well...

This is simple, fast, and works amazingly well amazingly often.

