I've recently faced this problem in a dynamic programming curriculum, and I honestly have no idea about how to determine the appropriate state. You're given N (1 <= N <= 70) paragraphs and M (1 <= M <= N) figures. Each paragraph i requires PL_i (1 <= PL_i <= 100) lines and references at most one figure. Each figure is referenced exactly once (i.e., no two paragraphs can reference the same figure, and for each figure there's a paragraph that references it.) Each figure requires PF_i (1 <= PF_i <= 100) lines. The task is to distribute those figures and paragraphs on paper in the order they're given, where one paper fits for L lines at most. No paragraph or figure is too large to fit on one paper. If a paragraph x placed on paper x_p references a figure y then y must be placed on either the paper x_p - 1 or x_p or x_p + 1. We have to find the minimum number of lines (and thus pages) to allocate in order to distribute all the figures and paragraphs. Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance!