Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Solve/Verify: show whether a result is optimal

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#322 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
javascript, react
Domain
frontend

Research direction

Start with components/pageblocks/SolveRowReact.js and components/pageblocks/VerifyRowReact.js, then inspect how the frontend determines problem type and solver solverType. The issue proposes notes for exact, approximation, heuristic/stochastic, and decision solvers, plus an optimization-verification note; check the structured solve endpoint dependency and test dark mode and phone width. Done when the appropriate notes appear and decision problems show none.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement

Summary

In the Solve and Verify sections on the main page, show a short note saying whether a result is optimal, so users don't read a valid answer as the best answer.

Why

  • A greedy or approximation solver can return a valid answer that isn't the best one (e.g. a vertex cover larger than the minimum), and nothing on the page says so.
  • Verifiers for optimization problems check that an answer is valid, not that it's optimal (ReduxISU/Redux#603). "Verified" next to a Minimum Vertex Cover answer currently reads as "this is a minimum cover," which isn't what was checked.

Proposal

Solve section (components/pageblocks/SolveRowReact.js): under the solver output, show one of:

  • "Optimal: this solver is exact, so this is a best possible answer."
  • "Not guaranteed optimal: approximation solver, within 2× of optimal." (using the approximation ratio when the backend provides it)
  • "Not guaranteed optimal: heuristic/stochastic solver."
  • nothing, for decision problems, where "optimal" doesn't apply

Verify section (components/pageblocks/VerifyRowReact.js): for optimization problems, add a note like "Checks that this is a valid answer. It does not check that it's the best one."

Data source: the structured solve endpoint in ReduxISU/Redux (linked in a comment below) returns optimal directly. Until that exists, the note can be worked out from what the frontend already has: the solver's solverType plus whether the problem is decision or optimization.

Check dark mode and phone width for the new text (#302).

Related

  • ReduxISU/Redux#603: optimization verifier contract
  • ReduxISU/Redux#605: "no solution" vs. empty-set answers
  • #255: Solver Type tags in the solver dropdown

Issue Handling

New issue, not tied to an existing one.

Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
3
Forks
18
Avg merge
23h 39m
Merged PRs (30d)
39

Getting set up

Open in Codespaces

Starts the project's dev container in your browser, under your own GitHub account.

  • Ships a Dockerfile or Docker Compose file
  • Has a pull request template
  • No contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from ReduxISU/Redux_GUI

All issues in ReduxISU/Redux_GUI

Similar issues

More JavaScript issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.