When DP Gets Messy: A Student's Journey Through Delete and Earn
· 10 min read
A dialogue between Professor Chen and Alex, a senior Computer Science student, as they unravel why some DP problems resist the standard recursive → memoization → tabulation pipeline.
The Student's Confusion
Alex: [walks into office hours with laptop open] Professor Chen, I'm really confused about this LeetCode problem I'm working on. I thought I understood DP, but something's not clicking.
Professor Chen: Let's see what you've got. Walk me through it.
Alex: It's LC 740: Delete and Earn. Here's the problem: