Questions tagged [complexity-theory]
Questions related to the (computational) complexity of solving problems
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What is the definition of P, NP, NP-complete and NP-hard?
I'm in a course about computing and complexity, and am unable to understand what these terms mean.
All I know is that NP is a subset of NP-complete, which is a subset of NP-hard, but I have no idea ...
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What are common techniques for reducing problems to each other?
In computability and complexity theory (and maybe other fields), reductions are ubiquitous. There are many kinds, but the principle remains the same: show that one problem $L_1$ is at least as hard as ...
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How can we assume that basic operations on numbers take constant time?
Normally in algorithms we do not care about comparison, addition, or subtraction of numbers -- we assume they run in time $O(1)$. For example, we assume this when we say that comparison-based sorting ...
user742
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How do I construct reductions between problems to prove a problem is NP-complete?
I am taking a complexity course and I am having trouble with coming up with reductions between NPC problems. How can I find reductions between problems? Is there a general trick that I can use? How ...
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What is the difference between an algorithm, a language and a problem?
It seems that on this site, people will often correct others for confusing "algorithms" and "problems." What are the difference between these? How do I know when I should be considering algorithms and ...
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Reduce the following problem to SAT
Here is the problem. Given $k, n, T_1, \ldots, T_m$, where each $T_i \subseteq \{1, \ldots, n\}$. Is there a subset $S \subseteq \{1, \ldots, n\}$ with size at most $k$ such that $S \cap T_i \neq \...
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Optimization version of decision problems
It is known that each optimization/search problem has an equivalent decision problem. For example the shortest path problem
optimization/search version:
Given an undirected unweighted graph $G ...
bek
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Are there subexponential-time algorithms for NP-complete problems?
Are there NP-complete problems which have proven subexponential-time algorithms?
I am asking for the general case inputs, I am not talking about tractable special cases here.
By sub-exponential, I ...
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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. ...
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Explaining the relevance of asymptotic complexity of algorithms to practice of designing algorithms
In algorithms and complexity we focus on the asymptotic complexity of algorithms, i.e. the amount of resources an algorithm uses as the size of the input goes to infinity.
In practice, what is ...
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Justification for neglecting constant factors in Big O
Many a times if the complexities are having constants such as 3n, we neglect this constant and say O(n) and not O(3n). I am unable to understand how can we neglect such three fold change? Some thing ...
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Why polynomial time is called "efficient"?
Why in computer science any complexity which is at most polynomial is considered efficient?
For any practical application(a), algorithms with complexity $n^{\log n}$ are way faster than algorithms ...
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"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. ...
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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....
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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 ...
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Why can't we flip the answer of a NDTM efficiently?
I read several times that it is not possible to flip the answer of a NDTM efficiently. However, I don’t understand why. For instance, given a NDTM $M$ that runs in $O(n)$, this text (section 3.3) ...
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Primality testing: Why is dividing a number $n$ by every integer between 2 and $\sqrt{n}$ an inefficient test?
In the paper "PRIMES is in P" the following is said (page 1):
Let PRIMES denote the set of all prime numbers. The definition of prime numbers already gives a way of determining if a number $n$ is ...
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Why hasn't there been an encryption algorithm that is based on the known NP-Hard problems?
Most of today's encryption, such as the RSA, relies on the integer factorization, which is not believed to be a NP-hard problem, but it belongs to BQP, which makes it vulnerable to quantum computers. ...
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NP-Hard problems that are not in NP but decidable
I'm wondering if there is a good example for an easy to understand NP-Hard problem that is not NP-Complete and not undecidable?
For example, the halting problem is NP-Hard, not NP-Complete, but is ...
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How hard is counting the number of simple paths between two nodes in a directed graph?
There is an easy polynomial algorithm to decide whether there is a path between two nodes in a directed graph (just do a routine graph traversal with, say, depth-first-search).
However it seems that, ...
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Is finding a solution of a satisfiability problem harder than deciding satisfiability?
Is the problem of determining whether or not a given Boolean expression is satisfiable computationally distinct from actually finding a solution to the expression?
In other words, is there another ...
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Is there a sometimes-efficient algorithm to solve #SAT?
Let $B$ be a boolean formula consisting of the usual AND, OR, and NOT operators and some variables. I would like to count the number of satisfying assignments for $B$. That is, I want to find the ...
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Can one show NP-hardness by Turing reductions?
In the paper Complexity of the Frobenius Problem by Ramírez-Alfonsín, a problem was proved to be NP-complete using Turing reductions.
Is that possible? How exactly? I thought this was only possible by ...
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Universal simulation of Turing machines
Let $f$ be a fixed time-constructable function.
The classical universal simulation result for TMs (Hennie and Stearns, 1966) states that there is a two-tape TM $U$ such that given
the description of ...
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Is the k-clique problem NP-complete?
In this Wikipedia article about the Clique problem in graph theory it states in the beginning that the problem of finding a clique of size K, in a graph G is NP-complete:
Cliques have also been ...
Eivind
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P-Completeness and Parallel Computation
I was recently reading about algorithms for checking bisimilarity and read that the problem is P-complete. Furthermore, a consequence of this is that this problem, or any P-complete problem, is ...
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Are there established complexity classes with real numbers?
A student recently asked me to check an NP-hardness proof for them. They performed a reduction along the lines of:
I reduce this problem $P'$ that is known to be NP-complete to my problem $P$ (with ...
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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 ...
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Complexity of multiplication
I've been reading around the area of complexity and arithmetic operations using logic gates; one thing that is confusing me is that
\begin{equation}
\Theta (n^{2})
\end{equation}
is quoted as being ...
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Is it possible to easily reduce 0/1 subset sum to subset sum with multiplicities?
So both the 0/1 subset sum problem (find a subset of given numbers that add up to a target sum) and the subset sum problem with "multiplicities" (find non-negative integer coefficients for the set ...
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Knapsack problem -- NP-complete despite dynamic programming solution?
Knapsack problems are easily solved by dynamic programming. Dynamic programming runs in polynomial time; that is why we do it, right?
I have read it is actually an NP-complete problem, though, which ...
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What would be the real-world implications of a constructive $P=NP$ proof?
I have a high-level understanding of the $P=NP$ problem and I understand that if it were absolutely "proven" to be true with a provided solution, it would open the door for solving numerous problems ...
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Generalised 3SUM (k-SUM) problem?
The 3SUM problem tries to identify 3 integers $a,b,c$ from a set $S$ of size $n$ such that $a + b + c = 0$.
It is conjectured that there is not better solution than quadratic, i.e. $\mathcal{o}(n^2)$....
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Teaching NP-completeness - Turing reductions vs Karp reductions
I'm interested in the question of how best to teach NP-completeness to computer science majors. In particular, should we teach it using Karp reductions or using Turing reductions?
I feel that the ...
D.W.♦
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How can I reduce Subset Sum to Partition?
Maybe this is quite simple but I have some trouble to get this reduction. I want to reduce Subset Sum to Partition but at this time I don't see the relation!
Is it possible to reduce this problem ...
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If P = NP, why wouldn't $\emptyset$ and $\Sigma^*$ be NP-complete?
Apparently, if ${\sf P}={\sf NP}$, all languages in ${\sf P}$ except for $\emptyset$ and $\Sigma^*$ would be ${\sf NP}$-complete.
Why these two languages in particular? Can't we reduce any other ...
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How to scale down parallel complexity results to constantly many cores?
I have had problems accepting the complexity theoretic view of "efficiently solved by parallel algorithm" which is given by the class NC:
NC is the class of problems that can be solved by a ...
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Decision problems in $\mathsf{P}$ without fast algorithms
What are some examples of difficult decision problems that can be solved in polynomial time? I'm looking for problems for which the optimal algorithm is "slow", or problems for which the fastest known ...
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algorithm time analysis "input size" vs "input elements"
I'm still a bit confused with the terms "input length" and "input size" when used to analyze and describe the asymptomatic upper bound for an algorithm
Seems that input length for the algorithm ...
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Is there an efficient algorithm for expression equivalence?
e.g. $xy+x+y=x+y(x+1)$ ?
The expressions are from ordinary high-school algebra, but restricted to arithmetic addition and multiplication (e.g. $2+2=4; 2.3=6$), with no inverses, subtraction or ...
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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 ...
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Decisional problems vs Optimization problems : NP-COMPLETE vs NP-HARD
I'm studying some of computation theory and i encounter a big question mark. I have an optimization problem and i have to proof that is NP-HARD. I know that my problem can be reduced to another np-...
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How can I verify a solution to Travelling Salesman Problem in polynomial time?
So, TSP (Travelling salesman problem) decision problem is NP complete.
But I do not understand how I can verify that a given solution to TSP is in fact optimal in polynomial time, given that there is ...
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Why is Relativization a barrier?
When I was explaining the Baker-Gill-Solovay proof that there exists an oracle with which we can have, $\mathsf{P} = \mathsf{NP}$, and an oracle with which we can have $\mathsf{P} \neq \mathsf{NP}$ to ...
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Is regex golf NP-Complete?
As seen in this recent XKCD strip and this recent blog post from Peter Norvig (and a Slashdot story featuring the latter), "regex golf" (which might better be called the regular expression separation ...
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Is it really possible to prove lower bounds?
Given any computational problem, is the task of finding lower bounds for such computation really possible? I suppose it boils down to how a single computational step is defined and what model we use ...
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Prove NP-completeness of deciding satisfiability of monotone boolean formula
I am trying to solve this problem and I am really struggling.
A monotone boolean formula is a formula in propositional logic where all the literals are positive. For example,
$\qquad (x_1 \lor x_2) ...
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Decidable restrictions of the Post Correspondence Problem
The Post Correspondence Problem (PCP) is undecidable.
The bounded version of the PCP is $\mathrm{NP}$-complete and the marked version of the PCP (the words of one of the two lists are required to ...
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Why are all problems in FPTAS also in FPT?
According to the Wikipedia article on polynomial-time approximation schemes:
All problems in FPTAS are fixed-parameter tractable.
This result surprises me - these classes seem to be totally ...
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