The harmonic function was first introduced by Lee and Lee (JACM 1985) for analyzing their online bin-packing algorithm. Subsequently, it has been used to obtain approximation algorithms for many different packing problems. Here we slightly generalize the harmonic function and give alternative proofs of its important properties.

翻译：Lee 和 Lee (JACM 1985) 首次引入了调和函数, 用于分析他们的在线垃圾包装算法。 随后, 它被用来为许多不同的包装问题获取近似算法。 在这里, 我们略微概括了调和函数, 并提供了其重要属性的替代证明 。