Bomb dropping algorithm

Question

I have an n x m matrix consisting of non-negative integers. For example:

2 3 4 7 1
1 5 2 6 2
4 3 4 2 1
2 1 2 4 1
3 1 3 4 1
2 1 4 3 2
6 9 1 6 4
         


        

Answer 1

Here's another idea:

Let's start by assigning a weight to each space on the board for how many numbers would be reduced by dropping a bomb there. So if the space has a non-zero number, it gets a point, and if any space adjacent to it has a non-zero number, it gets an additional point. So if there is a 1000-by-1000 grid, we have a weight assigned to each of the 1 million spaces.

Then sort the list of spaces by weight, and bomb the one with the highest weight. This is getting the most bang for our buck, so to speak.

After that, update the weight of every space whose weight is affected by the bomb. This will be the space you bombed, and any space immediately adjacent to it, and any space immediately adjacent to those. In other words, any space which could have had its value reduced to zero by the bombing, or the value of a neighboring space reduced to zero.

Then, re-sort the list spaces by weight. Since only a small subset of spaces had their weight changed by the bombing, you won't need to resort the whole list, just move those ones around in the list.

Bomb the new highest weight space, and repeat the procedure.

This guarantees that every bombing reduces as many spaces as possible (basically, it hits as few spaces which are already zero as possible), so it would be optimal, except that their can be ties in weights. So you may need to do some back tracking when there is a tie for the top weight. Only a tie for the top weight matters, though, not other ties, so hopefully it's not too much back-tracking.

Edit: Mysticial's counterexample below demonstrates that in fact this isn't guaranteed to be optimal, regardless of ties in weights. In some cases reducing the weight as much as possible in a given step actually leaves the remaining bombs too spread out to achieve as high a cummulative reduction after the second step as you could have with a slightly less greedy choice in the first step. I was somewhat mislead by the notion that the results are insensitive to the order of bombings. They are insensitive to the order in that you could take any series of bombings and replay them from the start in a different order and end up with the same resulting board. But it doesn't follow from that that you can consider each bombing independently. Or, at least, each bombing must be considered in a way that takes into account how well it sets up the board for subsequent bombings.