P, NP, and NP-Completeness

The Basics of Computational Complexity
Erscheinungsjahr 2010
ISBN: 978-0-521-12254-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 358 g

The focus of this book is the P versus NP Question and the theory of NP-completeness. It also provides adequate preliminaries regarding computational problems and computational models. The P versus NP Question asks whether or not finding solutions is harder than checking the correctness of solutions. An alternative formulation asks whether or not discovering proofs is harder than verifying their correctness. It is widely believed that the answer to these equivalent formulations is positive, and this is captured by saying that P is different from NP. Although the P versus NP Question remains unresolved, the theory of NP-completeness offers evidence for the intractability of specific problems in NP by showing that they are universal for the entire class. Amazingly enough, NP-complete problems exist, and furthermore hundreds of natural computational problems arising in many different areas of mathematics and science are NP-complete.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Goldreich, Oded

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Informatik Berechenbarkeitstheorie, Komplexitätstheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Computational tasks and models; 2. The P versus NP Question; 3. Polynomial-time reductions; 4. NP-completeness; 5. Three relatively advanced topics; Epilogue: a brief overview of complexity theory.

Über Autor(innen)

Goldreich, Oded
Oded Goldreich is a Professor of Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an incumbent of the Meyer W. Weisgal Professorial Chair. He is an editor for the SIAM Journal on Computing, the Journal of Cryptology, and Computational Complexity and previously authored the books Modern Cryptography, Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness, the two-volume work Foundations of Cryptography, and Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective.