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satt comments on Toy problem: increase production or use production? - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Alexei 05 July 2014 08:58PM

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Comment author: satt 08 July 2014 11:15:30PM 1 point [-]

Questions for you: where have you seen these types of problems come up in your life? Is this a known class of problems?

The solutions you derived resemble bang-bang solutions in control theory. If you have a control knob you can turn to any value between some minimum and some maximum, a bang-bang solution is an optimal solution which turns the knob all the way in one direction for a while, then turns it all the way in the other direction and leaves it there indefinitely.