CMP.10:1 - Problem frame

Use this when a computation spends too much effort finding, updating, combining or storing information, and changing its representation could improve those operations. The mathematical objects may already be understood; the missing choice is how to obtain the needed answers from their stored form.

A sequence can be stored directly or through partial aggregates. A graph can be represented by a matrix or by lists of neighbors. The same relation can have very different computational consequences under those choices. Conversely, a compact representation can lose the multiplicity, ordering or state distinction needed after an update.

The result is a representation with effective read and update operations, a meaning-preservation argument, and a cost comparison for the intended workload. The reader needs the object’s relevant operations and elementary algorithm analysis. No particular programming language or hardware is required.

Keep the existing representation when it already serves the work affordably. Choosing what the subject model should describe is a separate task. Here the target distinctions are sufficiently known to ask how different representations support their computation; a discovered missing distinction returns to that formulation.