Talk:Dynamic programming

Confusion

The first paragraph of the second part and the article on algorithms states that dynamic programming is a bottom-up approach, but later this article says dynamic programming may use bottom-up or top-down approaches. --zeno 11:46, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've revised that section. It was very vague and somewhat incorrect. I hope there's less confusion now. Derrick Coetzee 20:18, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Weirdness

The page says "i dont know" in those terms, which is not only weirdly misplaced, but also improperly formatted. Someone check.

Misplaced section

The part following "The steps for using dynamic program goes as follows:" is out of place. Out of nowhere the article starts using terms like 'gap penalties' and 'sequence alignment.' Seems like this was copied from some article on a specific application, such as protien sequencing. Anon, Wed Jul 11 14:11:43 EDT 2007

Too many examples

This is not a textbook. One good example would suffice. Even worse, many of them are just too long (and boring). Put them in wikibooks. Unfortunately, any attempt to fix this article would be blocked as "vandalism". Way to go, Wikipedia!

Why ALGOL

Hello , in

function fib(n)

   if n <= 1 return n
   return fib(n − 1) + fib(n − 2)

I doubt that the return function would return a false if, so maybe you make a if n larger or equal to 1 out of it ? That also has the nice side effect that the Fibonacci numbers would become larger than -1, like the original series is larger than +1, I guess that is what you intended ...

Suggestion for External Links: Accessible Grid Game Analogy

Hello editors. I want to disclose upfront that I have a conflict of interest, as I am an author for the Goal-Based Investments blog. Because of this COI, I am not editing the article myself and am instead submitting this request for independent review.

The current Wikipedia article on Dynamic Programming is incredibly thorough, but it is also highly mathematical and heavily oriented toward computer science. I have noticed that lay readers often struggle to grasp the core intuition of backward induction before hitting the Bellman equations.

I recently wrote an introductory article that explains the concept purely visually, using a 2D grid/chessboard game to demonstrate how working backward from a goal state solves the optimization problem step-by-step.

I believe this would be a highly useful resource for beginners and a good fit for the External links section.

The link is here: https://goal-based.investments/blog/dynamic-programming-explained-what-it-is-how-it-works

Could an independent editor review this and consider adding it if they find it has educational merit? Thank you for your time. Llinardi93 (talk) 18:15, 8 July 2026 (UTC)