Conan Kelly wrote:
Martin Brown,

If it is a homework question then you were probably meant to compute the
sum of every pair or something like that. N(N-1)/2

If it was a homework problem, I would have a text book to look up the
correct process.

We have a client that has $28,000,000+ in loans in one category in June of
2006. They are telling me that $24,000,000+ are classified wrong and were
reclassified to another category in July 2006. For one reason or another,
they can't/didn't supply a list of loan ID numbers of the misclassified
loans. I was hoping to see if I could come up with a combination of loan
amounts to equal the $24,000,000+ number they supplied.

Be sure to get paid in cash for this work in advance. They are unlikely
to be in business much longer if they make mistakes like that.

The only chance you might have is to find a plausible solution by one of
the more advanced combinatorial methods like simulated annealing or a
greedy packing algorithm. They are considerably faster than brute force
but cannot guarantee to find the global optimum.

Comparing the active loans tags in June against July would seem a far
more logical way to proceed.

Regards,
Martin Brown