Talk:Shortest common supersequence/Archive 1

Archive 1

Newbie here. I think I'm in the right place and doing this properly.

There is no definition of "supersequence" in the article, and an examination of the example result string does not give an indication of how it was determined. Likewise, the external link does not give an explanation. Further, the article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersequence only shows a geological use for "supersequence". Thus, the "Shortest common supersequence" article fails to achieve its purpose because I still don't understand it. A definition of "supersequence", either within this article or in its own new "supersequence (strings)" page, would be apropos. Also, a brief description of how the result string was determined from the two source strings would likewise be helpful.

Newbie attempt at signing: 67.142.130.21 (talk) 19:36, 8 June 2008 (UTC) (jbsmyth@hughes.net)

Newbie note: I read all the Wikipedia links that I could find about making a suggestion for this article page. If I've really messed this up, could someone email me and tell me how to do it properly? Thank you.

The word supersequence confused me too, but I suppose A is a supersequence of B if and only if B is a subsequence of A. And subsequence should be easier to grasp mentally. "A contains B". JöG (talk) 21:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I take that back after having read subsequence and the substring-versus-subsequence part. Would have to read more carefully to know what's going on. JöG (talk) 21:07, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

And by the way, what is a "dual problem"? JöG (talk) 21:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I've linked "dual problems" it to its wikipedia definition. 118.90.141.152 (talk) 04:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

We either need some citation or clarification on their "not being dual problems". For two strings, it seems plain to me that LCS and SCS actually are dual problems, since you can take the LCS of strings A and B and, by trivially inserting the remaining letters, produce an SCS. For example: A = "UNITED", B = "FIGHTER", LCS(A,B) = "ITE", so create the SCS by inserting all unused letters without violating the order in either string, SCS = "UNFIGHTERD". Perhaps the article should specify that the problems are not dual for more than two strings (though I'm not sure that's true either). 184.182.233.2 (talk) 15:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)