Dynamic programming is an important algorithm design technique. It is used for solving problems whose solutions involve recursively solving subproblems that share subsubproblems. While a straightforward recursive program solves common subsubproblems repeatedly and often takes exponential time, a dynamic programming algorithm solves every subsubproblem just once, saves the result, reuses it when the subsubproblem is encountered again, and takes polynomial time. This paper describes a systematic method for transforming programs written as straightforward recursions into programs that use dynamic programming. The method extends the original program to cache all possibly computed values, incrementalizes the extended program with respect to an input increment to use and maintain all cached results, prunes out cached results that are not used in the incremental computation, and uses the resulting incremental program to form an optimized new program. Incrementalization statically exploits semantics of both control structures and data structures and maintains as invariants equalities characterizing cached results. The principle underlying incrementalization is general for achieving drastic program speedups. Compared with previous methods that perform memoization or tabulation, the method based on incrementalization is more powerful and systematic. It has been implemented and applied to numerous problems and succeeded on all of them. 1

Abstract. Dynamic programming is a classical programming technique, applicable in a wide variety of domains such as stochastic systems analysis, operations research, combinatorics of discrete structures, flow problems, parsing of ambiguous languages, and biosequence analysis. Little methodology has hitherto been available to guide the design of such algorithms. The matrix recurrences that typically describe a dynamic programming algorithm are difficult to construct, error-prone to implement, and, in nontrivial applications, almost impossible to debug completely. This article introduces a discipline designed to alleviate this problem. We describe an algebraic style of dynamic programming over sequence data. We define its formal framework, based on a combination of grammars and algebras, and including a formalization of Bellman’s Principle. We suggest a language used for algorithm design on a convenient level of abstraction. We outline three ways of implementing this language, including an embedding in a lazy functional language. The workings of the

Abstract. Dynamic programming is a classic programming technique, applicable in a wide variety of domains, like stochastic systems analysis, operations research, combinatorics of discrete structures, flow problems, parsing with ambiguous grammars, or biosequence analysis. Yet, no methodology is available for designing such algorithms. The matrix recurrences that typically describe a dynamic programming algorithm are difficult to construct, error-prone to implement, and almost impossible to debug. This article introduces an algebraic style of dynamic programming over sequence data. We define the formal framework including a formalization of Bellman’s principle, specify an executable specification language, and show how algorithm design decisions and tuning for efficiency can be described on a convenient level of abstraction.

Abstract. Dynamic programming is a classic programming technique, applicable in a wide variety of domains, like stochastic systems analysis, operations research, combinatorics of discrete structures, flow problems, parsing ambiguous languages, or biosequence analysis. Yet, heretofore no methodology was available guiding the design of such algorithms. The matrix recurrences that typically describe a dynamic programming algorithm are difficult to construct, error-prone to implement, and almost impossible to debug. This article introduces an algebraic style of dynamic programming over sequence data. We define its formal framework including a formalization of Bellman’s principle. We suggest a language for algorithm design on a convenient level of abstraction. We outline three ways of implementation, including an embedding in a lazy functional language. The workings of the new method are illustrated by a series of examples from diverse areas of computer science.