Dynamic programming is a branch of operational research and a mathematical method to solve the optimization of decision-making process. In the early 1950s, American mathematician R.E.Bellman and others put forward the famous optimization principle when studying the optimization problem of multi-step decision-making process, which transformed the multi-step process into a series of single-stage problems and solved them one by one by using the relationship between the stages, thus creating a new method to solve this kind of process optimization problem-dynamic programming.

Dynamic programming is a method used in mathematics and computer science to solve optimization problems with overlapping subproblems. The basic idea is to decompose the original problem into similar subproblems, and in the process of solving, the solution of the original problem is obtained by solving the subproblems. The idea of dynamic programming is the basis of many algorithms and is widely used in computer science and engineering. Famous application examples include: solving the shortest path problem, knapsack problem, project management, network traffic optimization and so on.