def longest_increasing_subsequence(d): 'Return one of the L.I.S. of list d' l = [] for i in range(len(d)): l.append(max([l[j] for j in range(i) if l[j][-1] < d[i]] or [[]], key=len) + [d[i]]) return max(l, key=len) if __name__ == '__main__': for d in [[3,2,6,4,5,1], [0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 10, 6, 14, 1, 9, 5, 13, 3, 11, 7, 15]]: print('a L.I.S. of %s is %s' % (d, longest_increasing_subsequence(d)))