I'm stuck at one point of this paper that I'm reading atm. Just can't understand why they're doing this:
The general topic is performance of algorithms, that will not always compute the exact solution of the problem. So I have a pretty special linear problem and I want to make some conclusions on the "effectiveness" of a given algorithm. First of all what exactly is meant by effectiveness - is it the time or is it the error of the computed value relative to the real optimal value ?
In detail: It's about vehicle minimization in deliveries and such. First the author gives a lower bound on the number of vehicles that you might need to make all the deliveries for a given set of customers, then he proceedes with an upper bound (which is the number of customers). After that he takes the ratio of these two values, meaning:
"upper bound / lower bound" := n/c
The conclusion is: "The algorithm will achieve at worst a factor n/c result"
What does that mean ... ?
Thanks in advance :)