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### Proof/certificate in a decision problem? [duplicate]

In this wikipedia article, the following comment is made: Consider an arbitrary decision problem in the class NP. By definition each problem instance $x$ which are answered 'yes' have a certificate ...
16k views

### How not to solve P=NP?

There are lots of attempts at proving either $\mathsf{P} = \mathsf{NP}$ or $\mathsf{P} \neq \mathsf{NP}$, and naturally many people think about the question, having ideas for proving either direction....
13k views

### Why are some games np-complete?

I read the Wikipedia entry about "List of NP-complete problems" and found that games like super mario, pokemon, tetris or candy crush saga are np-complete. How can I imagine np-completeness of a game? ...
4k views

### Decision problems vs “real” problems that aren't yes-or-no

I read in many places that some problems are difficult to approximate (it is NP-hard to approximate them). But approximation is not a decision problem: the answer is a real number and not Yes or No. ...
6k views

### Flaw in my NP = CoNP Proof?

I have this very simple "proof" for NP = CoNP and I think I did something wrongly somewhere, but I cannot find what is wrong. Can someone help me out? Let A be some problem in NP, and let M be the ...
10k views

### “NP-complete” optimization problems

I am slightly confused by some terminology I have encountered regarding the complexity of optimization problems. In an algorithms class, I had the large parsimony problem described as NP-complete. ...
2k views

### Why are NP-complete problems so different in terms of their approximation?

I'd like to begin the question by saying I'm a programmer, and I don't have a lot of background in complexity theory. One thing that I've noticed is that while many problems are NP-complete, when ...
5k views

### P, NP and specialised Turing Machines

I'm sort of new, but very interested to the field of computing and complexity theory, and I want to clarify my understanding about how to class problems, and how strongly the problems relate to the ...
745 views

### Is there a complexity viewpoint of Galois' theorem?

Galois's theorem effectively says that one cannot express the roots of a polynomial of degree >= 5 using rational functions of coefficients and radicals - can't this be read to be saying that given a ...
5k views

### Do any decision problems exist outside NP and NP-Hard?

This question asks about NP-hard problems that are not NP-complete. I'm wondering if there exist any decision problems that are neither NP nor NP-hard. In order to be in NP, problems have to have a ...
5k views

### What does it mean for a problem to be both NP hard and coNP hard

I have a faint notion of what NP hard is (that a problem is legit difficult 3 SAT for example). I have forgotten what coNP hard, and Wikipedia tells me that the complement of coNP hard is NP hard......
3k views

### Can all NP-hard problems be reduced to one another?

I know that all NP-complete problems can be reduced to each other, but how about NP-hard problems? Can all NP-hard problems be reduced to one another?
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### Richard Karp's 21 NP-Hard problems, the meaning of his research?

In Richard Karp's paper "Reducability among combinatorial problems" he lists 21 NP-Hard problems. Though I can somewhat understand the ideas and motivation behind the paper I am searching for some ...
3k views

### Does two languages being in P imply reduction to each other?

Given two languages $L_1$ and $L_2$ that are in $\mathsf{P}$, can it be proven that there is a polynomial time reduction from $L_1$ to $L_2$ and vice versa? If so, how? I noticed that if $L_1$ is the ...
6k views

### Why is SAT in NP?

I know that CNF SAT is in NP (and also NP-complete), because SAT is in NP and NP-complete. But what I don't understand is why? Is there anyone that can explain this?

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