In theoretical computer science, closest string is the name of an NP-hard computational problem, which tries to find the geometrical center of a set of input strings.
To understand the word "center" it is necessary to define a distance between two strings. Usually, this problem is studied with the Hamming distance in mind.
Read more about Closest String: Formal Definition, Motivation, Simplifications and Data Reductions, Approximability, Fixed-parameter Tractability, Relations To Other Problems
Famous quotes containing the words closest and/or string:
“Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.... Of all things of thought, poetry is the closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art ...”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“The Indian remarked as before, “Must have hard wood to cook moose-meat,” as if that were a maxim, and proceeded to get it. My companion cooked some in California fashion, winding a long string of the meat round a stick and slowly turning it in his hand before the fire. It was very good. But the Indian, not approving of the mode, or because he was not allowed to cook it his own way, would not taste it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)