Introducing the golden section to computer science

Abstract

The golden section appears in nature showing that this magical number represents the right answer for finding the optimal solution to many covering problems. We claim that it can also be quite profitable using this number in the context of computer science. This assertion is contrasted by showing how to solve two quite different (classes of) computer science problems on the basis of the golden section. For each problem, an algorithm is given, and its results are compared with those of other methods, showing the advantages of our approach.