Greedy algorithm
This is student work which has not yet been approved as correct by the instructor
Introduction[edit]
The solving of complex multi-step problems by finding smaller individual solutions and hoping it will overall be a good solution. This involves breaking it down into smaller components and finding the best solution there locally for each one.
The main idea with the algorithm is that by breaking the problem into smaller parts, it is easier and more straight-forward to get a solution for each part. However once each small solution is reached, it is never reconsidered.
Advantage: Easier to find solutions to small problems, so more straight-forward to process rather than doing it as the whole complex problem. Disadvantage: All the small solutions might not mean the best solution overall.
Example of disadvantage: 
Designed to find highest sum, it will do this at each level of the tree. Therefore the algorithm will not know about the coming step which has a 99, and will instead pick the 12 branch.
A real life usage of greedy algorithm is in interval scheduling, where certain tasks take a certain amount of time, and you want to fit the most tasks into a given amount of time. A greedy algorithm finding the earliest finishing time, ignoring all tasks overlapping with that and then repeating will find both locally and globally the best solution.
<ref> http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/greedy-algorithm </ref>
How does it work or a deeper look[edit]
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