The Set Cover Problem is a classic optimization problem in computer science and mathematics. It involves a collection of sets and a universal set, where the goal is to select the smallest number of these sets such that their union covers the entire universal set. This problem is often encountered in areas like resource allocation, network design, and data mining. In formal terms, given a universal set U and a collection of subsets S1, S2, ..., Sn, the objective is to find the minimum number of subsets whose combined elements include every element in U. The Set Cover Problem is known to be NP-hard, meaning that no efficient algorithm is known to solve all instances of the problem optimally.