Question

Say you wanted to find which input causes function x to output value y, and you know the (finite) range of possible inputs.

The input and output are both numbers, and positively correlated.

What would be the best way to optimize that?

I’m currently just looping through all of the possible inputs.

Thanks.

Answer 1

One solution would be a binary search over the possible inputs.

Flow:

find the median input x
get the output from function(x)
if the output is less than the desired y
    start over using the smaller half of the possible inputs
else
    start over using the larger half of the possible inputs