When Greed Is Good: Greedy Algorithms and Matroids

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 28, 2026 · 55m

A hospital scheduler must fit as many operations as possible into one theatre tomorrow. Her predecessor booked the shortest first; her colleague books the earliest start. Both are wrong, and the right rule takes one sentence and a proof you can follow in your head. Part six of The Deep End's algorithms series is about greedy algorithms: when taking the best choice right now is provably optimal, as in David Huffman's 1951 term paper that beat his professor; when it fails, as with shillings and half crowns; when it is provably close enough; and the 1935 abstraction, the matroid, that says…