Introduction to Linear Programming in Python
Linear programming is a technique to optimize any problem with multiple variables and constraints. It’s a simple but powerful tool every data scientist should master.
Imagine you are a strategist recruiting an army. You have:
- Three resources: 🌾food, 🪵wood, and 🪙gold
- Three units: 🗡️swordsmen, 🏹bowmen, and 🐎horsemen.
Horsemen are stronger than bowmen, who are in turn stronger than swordsmen. The following table provides the cost and power of each unit:
| 🗡️Swordsman | 60 | 20 | 0 | 70 |
| 🏹Bowman | 80 | 10 | 40 | 95 |
| 🐎Horseman | 140 | 0 | 100 | 230 |
Now we have 1200 🌾food, 800 🪵wood, and 600 🪙gold. How should we maximize the power of our army considering these resources?
We could simply find the unit