In
mathematics and
computer science, an
optimization problem is the
problem of finding the
best solution from all
feasible solutions. Optimization problems can be divided into two categories depending on whether the
variables are
continuous or
discrete. An optimization problem with discrete variables is known as a
combinatorial optimization problem. In a combinatorial optimization problem, we are looking for an object such as an integer, permutation or graph from a finite (or possibly countable infinite) set. Problems with continuous variables include constrained problems and multimodal problems.