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Gadget (computer Science)
In computational complexity theory, a gadget is a subset of a problem instance that simulates the behavior of one of the fundamental units of a different computational problem. Gadgets are typically used to construct reductions from one computational problem to another, as part of proofs of NP-completeness or other types of computational hardness. The component design technique is a method for constructing reductions by using gadgets. traces the use of gadgets to a 1954 paper in graph theory by W. T. Tutte, in which Tutte provided gadgets for reducing the problem of finding a subgraph with given degree constraints to a perfect matching problem. However, the "gadget" terminology has a later origin, and does not appear in Tutte's paper. Example Many NP-completeness proofs are based on many-one reductions from 3-satisfiability, the problem of finding a satisfying assignment to a Boolean formula that is a conjunction (Boolean and) of clauses, each clause being the disjunction (Boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computational Complexity Theory
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm. A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant resources, whatever the algorithm used. The theory formalizes this intuition, by introducing mathematical models of computation to study these problems and quantifying their computational complexity, i.e., the amount of resources needed to solve them, such as time and storage. Other measures of complexity are also used, such as the amount of communication (used in communication complexity), the number of gates in a circuit (used in circuit complexity) and the number of processors (used in parallel computing). One of the roles of computationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
3-CNF
In Boolean logic, a formula is in conjunctive normal form (CNF) or clausal normal form if it is a conjunction of one or more clauses, where a clause is a disjunction of literals; otherwise put, it is a product of sums or an AND of ORs. As a canonical normal form, it is useful in automated theorem proving and circuit theory. All conjunctions of literals and all disjunctions of literals are in CNF, as they can be seen as conjunctions of one-literal clauses and conjunctions of a single clause, respectively. As in the disjunctive normal form (DNF), the only propositional connectives a formula in CNF can contain are and, or, and not. The not operator can only be used as part of a literal, which means that it can only precede a propositional variable or a predicate symbol. In automated theorem proving, the notion "''clausal normal form''" is often used in a narrower sense, meaning a particular representation of a CNF formula as a set of sets of literals. Examples and non-examples Al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linear Programming
Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear function#As a polynomial function, linear relationships. Linear programming is a special case of mathematical programming (also known as mathematical optimization). More formally, linear programming is a technique for the mathematical optimization, optimization of a linear objective function, subject to linear equality and linear inequality Constraint (mathematics), constraints. Its feasible region is a convex polytope, which is a set defined as the intersection (mathematics), intersection of finitely many Half-space (geometry), half spaces, each of which is defined by a linear inequality. Its objective function is a real number, real-valued affine function, affine (linear) function defined on this polyhedron. A linear programming algorithm finds a point in the polytope where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynomial-time Approximation Scheme
In computer science (particularly algorithmics), a polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) is a type of approximation algorithm for optimization problems (most often, NP-hard optimization problems). A PTAS is an algorithm which takes an instance of an optimization problem and a parameter and produces a solution that is within a factor of being optimal (or for maximization problems). For example, for the Euclidean traveling salesman problem, a PTAS would produce a tour with length at most , with being the length of the shortest tour. The running time of a PTAS is required to be polynomial in the problem size for every fixed ε, but can be different for different ε. Thus an algorithm running in time or even counts as a PTAS. Variants Deterministic A practical problem with PTAS algorithms is that the exponent of the polynomial could increase dramatically as ε shrinks, for example if the runtime is . One way of addressing this is to define the efficient polynomial-time a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
P Versus NP Problem
The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in theoretical computer science. In informal terms, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be quickly solved. The informal term ''quickly'', used above, means the existence of an algorithm solving the task that runs in polynomial time, such that the time to complete the task varies as a polynomial function on the size of the input to the algorithm (as opposed to, say, exponential time). The general class of questions for which some algorithm can provide an answer in polynomial time is " P" or "class P". For some questions, there is no known way to find an answer quickly, but if one is provided with information showing what the answer is, it is possible to verify the answer quickly. The class of questions for which an answer can be ''verified'' in polynomial time is NP, which stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time".A nondeterministic Turing machine can move to a state that is not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theoretical Computer Science (journal)
''Theoretical Computer Science'' (TCS) is a computer science journal published by Elsevier, started in 1975 and covering theoretical computer science. The journal publishes 52 issues a year. It is abstracted and indexed by Scopus and the Science Citation Index. According to the Journal Citation Reports, its 2020 impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as i ... is 0.827. References Computer science journals Elsevier academic journals Publications established in 1975 {{comp-sci-theory-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2-satisfiability
In computer science, 2-satisfiability, 2-SAT or just 2SAT is a computational problem of assigning values to variables, each of which has two possible values, in order to satisfy a system of constraints on pairs of variables. It is a special case of the general Boolean satisfiability problem, which can involve constraints on more than two variables, and of constraint satisfaction problems, which can allow more than two choices for the value of each variable. But in contrast to those more general problems, which are NP-complete, 2-satisfiability can be solved in polynomial time. Instances of the 2-satisfiability problem are typically expressed as Boolean formulas of a special type, called conjunctive normal form (2-CNF) or Krom formulas. Alternatively, they may be expressed as a special type of directed graph, the implication graph, which expresses the variables of an instance and their negations as vertices in a graph, and constraints on pairs of variables as directed edges. Both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIAM Journal On Computing
The ''SIAM Journal on Computing'' is a scientific journal focusing on the mathematical and formal aspects of computer science. It is published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Although its official ISO abbreviation is ''SIAM J. Comput.'', its publisher and contributors frequently use the shorter abbreviation ''SICOMP''. SICOMP typically hosts the special issues of the IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) and the Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), where about 15% of papers published in FOCS and STOC each year are invited to these special issues. For example, Volume 48 contains 11 out of 85 papers published in FOCS 2016. References * External linksSIAM Journal on Computing on |
Constraint Satisfaction Problem
Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are mathematical questions defined as a set of objects whose state must satisfy a number of constraints or limitations. CSPs represent the entities in a problem as a homogeneous collection of finite constraints over variables, which is solved by constraint satisfaction methods. CSPs are the subject of research in both artificial intelligence and operations research, since the regularity in their formulation provides a common basis to analyze and solve problems of many seemingly unrelated families. CSPs often exhibit high complexity, requiring a combination of heuristics and combinatorial search methods to be solved in a reasonable time. Constraint programming (CP) is the field of research that specifically focuses on tackling these kinds of problems. Additionally, Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT), the satisfiability modulo theories (SMT), mixed integer programming (MIP) and answer set programming (ASP) are all fields of research focusin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardness Of Approximation
In computer science, hardness of approximation is a field that studies the algorithmic complexity of finding near-optimal solutions to optimization problems. Scope Hardness of approximation complements the study of approximation algorithms by proving, for certain problems, a limit on the factors with which their solution can be efficiently approximated. Typically such limits show a factor of approximation beyond which a problem becomes NP-hard, implying that finding a polynomial time approximation for the problem is impossible unless NP=P. Some hardness of approximation results, however, are based on other hypotheses, a notable one among which is the unique games conjecture. History Since the early 1970s it was known that many optimization problems could not be solved in polynomial time unless P = NP, but in many of these problems the optimal solution could be efficiently approximated to a certain degree. In the 1970s, Teofilo F. Gonzalez and Sartaj Sahni began the study of ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NC (complexity)
In computational complexity theory, the class NC (for "Nick's Class") is the set of decision problems decidable in polylogarithmic time on a parallel computer with a polynomial number of processors. In other words, a problem with input size ''n'' is in NC if there exist constants ''c'' and ''k'' such that it can be solved in time using parallel processors. Stephen Cook coined the name "Nick's class" after Nick Pippenger, who had done extensive research on circuits with polylogarithmic depth and polynomial size.Arora & Barak (2009) p.120 Just as the class P can be thought of as the tractable problems ( Cobham's thesis), so NC can be thought of as the problems that can be efficiently solved on a parallel computer.Arora & Barak (2009) p.118 NC is a subset of P because polylogarithmic parallel computations can be simulated by polynomial-time sequential ones. It is unknown whether NC = P, but most researchers suspect this to be false, meaning that there are probably some tractable pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polynomial Time
In computer science, the time complexity is the computational complexity that describes the amount of computer time it takes to run an algorithm. Time complexity is commonly estimated by counting the number of elementary operations performed by the algorithm, supposing that each elementary operation takes a fixed amount of time to perform. Thus, the amount of time taken and the number of elementary operations performed by the algorithm are taken to be related by a constant factor. Since an algorithm's running time may vary among different inputs of the same size, one commonly considers the worst-case time complexity, which is the maximum amount of time required for inputs of a given size. Less common, and usually specified explicitly, is the average-case complexity, which is the average of the time taken on inputs of a given size (this makes sense because there are only a finite number of possible inputs of a given size). In both cases, the time complexity is generally expresse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
