Eureka! Bellman’s Principle of Optimality is Valid!

Moshe Sniedovich ()
Additional contact information
Moshe Sniedovich: The University of Melbourne

Chapter Chapter 29 in Modeling Uncertainty, 2002, pp 735-749 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Ever since Bellman formulated his Principle of Optimality in the early 1950s, the Principle has been the subject of considerable criticism. In fact, a number of dynamic programming (DP) scholars quantified specific difficulties with the common interpretation of Bellman’s Principle and proposed constructive remedies. In the case of stochastic processes with a non-denumerable state space, the remedy requires the incorporation of the faithful “with probability one” clause. In this short article we are reminded that if one sticks to Bellman’s original version of the principle, then no such a fix is necessary. We also reiterate the central role that Bellman’s favourite “final state condition” plays in the theory of DP in general and the validity of the Principle of Optimality in particular.

Keywords: dynamic programming; principle of optimality; final state condition; stochastic processes; non-denumerable state space (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isochp:978-0-306-48102-4_29

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780306481024

DOI: 10.1007/0-306-48102-2_29

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Series in Operations Research & Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().