the.com/knapsack
A bag so deceptively simple it broke computer science and still hasn't recovered.
means A bag with shoulder straps for carrying supplies on your back, especially while hiking or marching.
from From Low German or Dutch, likely 'knapsack' / 'knappsack' — the second half is plainly 'sack' (a bag), and the first, 'knappen,' meant to bite or snap, possibly hinting at a soldier's bag of food to snap up on the march. It marched into English in the 17th century, carried in by Continental soldiers, and never put itself down.
- NP problem
- Optimal packing is famously hard for computers
- crypto past
- Once powered an encryption scheme, later cracked
- name origin
- German knappen, meaning to bite or snap
- hiker math
- Best gear-to-weight ratio is genuine math
- thief's dilemma
- Textbook framed as a burglar optimizing loot
for instance
bounded knapsack problem — variant where each item can be selected multiple times, studied in operational research