Before moving on to approaches to solve a DP problem, let us have a look at the characteristics of a problem upon which we can apply the DP technique.

We can apply DP technique to those problems that exhibit the below 2 characteristics:

1. Optimal Substructures

• Any problem is said to be having optimal substructure property if its overall optimal solution can be evaluated from the optimal solutions of its subproblems.
• Consider the example of Fibonacci Numbers.

  • We know that a n^th Fibonacci number (Fib(n)) is nothing but sum of previous 2 fibonacci numbers, i.e: Fib(n) = Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2). 

  • From the above equation, we can clearly deduce that a problem of size ‘n’ has been reduced to subproblems of size ‘n-1’ and ‘n-2’.

  • Hence, we can say that Fibonacci numbers have the optimal substructure property.

2. Overlapping Subproblems

• Subproblems are basically the smaller versions of an original problem. Any problem is said to have overlapping subproblems if calculating its solution involves solving the same subproblem multiple times.
• Let us take the example of finding n^th Fibonacci number. Consider evaluating Fib(5). As shown in the breakdown of steps shown in the image below, we can see that Fib(5) is calculated by taking sum of Fib(4) and Fib(3) and Fib(4) is calculated by taking sum of Fib(3) and Fib(2) and so on. Clearly, we can see that the Fib(3), Fib(2), Fib(1) and Fib(0) has been repeatedly evaluated. These are nothing but the overlapping subproblems. 

Note: It is important for a problem to have BOTH the above specified characteristics in order to be eligible to be solved using DP technique.