The bin packing problem asks the question: given a set of items, each with an associated weight wi, and a set of bins, each of capacity C, how many bins are needed in order to pack all the items where no bin can exceed its capacity and all items are indivisible (cannot be split and packed into more than one bin)? This problem is at the root of other seemingly different problems, like assigning television advertisements to breaks between shows, or assigning lots of work to engineers. For a more detailed explanation of this problem, see Chapter 8, Combining Constraints: Bin Packing.
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