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USTCON
In computational complexity theory, SL (Symmetric Logspace or Sym-L) is the complexity class of problems log-space reducible to USTCON (''undirected s-t connectivity''), which is the problem of determining whether there exists a path between two vertices in an undirected graph, otherwise described as the problem of determining whether two vertices are in the same connected component. This problem is also called the undirected reachability problem. It does not matter whether many-one reducibility or Turing reducibility is used. Although originally described in terms of symmetric Turing machines, that equivalent formulation is very complex, and the reducibility definition is what is used in practice. USTCON is a special case of STCON (''directed reachability''), the problem of determining whether a directed path between two vertices in a directed graph exists, which is complete for NL. Because USTCON is SL-complete, most advances that impact USTCON have also impacted SL. Thus t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symmetric Turing Machine
A symmetric Turing machine is a Turing machine which has a configuration graph that is undirected (that is, configuration i yields configuration j if and only if j yields i). Definition of symmetric Turing machines Formally, we define a variant of Turing machines with a set of transitions of the form , where ''p,q'' are states, ''ab,cd'' are pairs of symbols and ''D'' is a direction. If ''D'' is ''left'', then the head of a machine in state ''p'' above a tape symbol ''b'' preceded by a symbol ''a'' can be transitioned by moving the head left, changing the state to ''q'' and replacing the symbols ''a,b'' by ''c,d''. The opposite transition can always be applied. If ''D'' is right the transition is analogous. The ability to peek at two symbols and change both at a time is non-essential, but makes the definition easier. Such machines were first defined in 1982 by Harry R. Lewis and Christos Papadimitriou, who were looking for a class in which to place USTCON, the problem askin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L (complexity)
In computational complexity theory, L (also known as LSPACE or DLOGSPACE) is the complexity class containing decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine using a logarithmic amount of writable memory space., Definition 8.12, p. 295., p. 177. Formally, the Turing machine has two tapes, one of which encodes the input and can only be read, whereas the other tape has logarithmic size but can be read as well as written. Logarithmic space is sufficient to hold a constant number of pointers into the input and a logarithmic number of boolean flags, and many basic logspace algorithms use the memory in this way. Complete problems and logical characterization Every non-trivial problem in L is complete under log-space reductions, so weaker reductions are required to identify meaningful notions of L-completeness, the most common being first-order reductions. A 2004 result by Omer Reingold shows that USTCON, the problem of whether there exists a path ... [...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] |
Graph Theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are connected by '' edges'' (also called ''links'' or ''lines''). A distinction is made between undirected graphs, where edges link two vertices symmetrically, and directed graphs, where edges link two vertices asymmetrically. Graphs are one of the principal objects of study in discrete mathematics. Definitions Definitions in graph theory vary. The following are some of the more basic ways of defining graphs and related mathematical structures. Graph In one restricted but very common sense of the term, a graph is an ordered pair G=(V,E) comprising: * V, a set of vertices (also called nodes or points); * E \subseteq \, a set of edges (also called links or lines), which are unordered pairs of vertices (that is, an edge is associated with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Symposium On Foundations Of Computer Science
The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. As writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing Machinery counterpart STOC (the Symposium on Theory of Computing) are considered the two top conferences in theoretical computer science, considered broadly: they “are forums for some of the best work throughout theory of computing that promote breadth among theory of computing researchers and help to keep the community together.” includes regular attendance at FOCS and STOC as one of several defining characteristics of theoretical computer scientists. Awards The Knuth Prize for outstanding contributions to theoretical computer science is presented alternately at FOCS and STOC. Works of the highest quality presented at the conference are awarded the Best Paper Award. In addition, the Machtey Award is presented to the best student- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random Walk
In mathematics, a random walk is a random process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space. An elementary example of a random walk is the random walk on the integer number line \mathbb Z which starts at 0, and at each step moves +1 or −1 with equal probability. Other examples include the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas (see Brownian motion), the search path of a foraging animal, or the price of a fluctuating stock and the financial status of a gambler. Random walks have applications to engineering and many scientific fields including ecology, psychology, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, and sociology. The term ''random walk'' was first introduced by Karl Pearson in 1905. Lattice random walk A popular random walk model is that of a random walk on a regular lattice, where at each step the location jumps to another site according to some probability distribution. In a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Savitch's Theorem
In computational complexity theory, Savitch's theorem, proved by Walter Savitch in 1970, gives a relationship between deterministic and non-deterministic space complexity. It states that for any function f\in\Omega(\log(n)), :\mathsf\left(f\left(n\right)\right) \subseteq \mathsf\left(f\left(n\right)^2\right). In other words, if a nondeterministic Turing machine can solve a problem using f(n) space, a deterministic Turing machine can solve the same problem in the square of that space bound.Arora & Barak (2009) p.86 Although it seems that nondeterminism may produce exponential gains in time (as formalized in the unproven exponential time hypothesis In computational complexity theory, the exponential time hypothesis is an unproven computational hardness assumption that was formulated by . It states that satisfiability of 3-CNF Boolean formulas cannot be solved more quickly than exponential t ...), Savitch's theorem shows that it has a markedly more limited effect on space requ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breadth-first Search
Breadth-first search (BFS) is an algorithm for searching a tree data structure for a node that satisfies a given property. It starts at the tree root and explores all nodes at the present depth prior to moving on to the nodes at the next depth level. Extra memory, usually a queue, is needed to keep track of the child nodes that were encountered but not yet explored. For example, in a chess endgame a chess engine may build the game tree from the current position by applying all possible moves, and use breadth-first search to find a win position for white. Implicit trees (such as game trees or other problem-solving trees) may be of infinite size; breadth-first search is guaranteed to find a solution node if one exists. In contrast, (plain) depth-first search, which explores the node branch as far as possible before backtracking and expanding other nodes, may get lost in an infinite branch and never make it to the solution node. Iterative deepening depth-first search avoids ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Depth-first Search
Depth-first search (DFS) is an algorithm for traversing or searching tree or graph data structures. The algorithm starts at the root node (selecting some arbitrary node as the root node in the case of a graph) and explores as far as possible along each branch before backtracking. Extra memory, usually a stack, is needed to keep track of the nodes discovered so far along a specified branch which helps in backtracking of the graph. A version of depth-first search was investigated in the 19th century by French mathematician Charles Pierre Trémaux as a strategy for solving mazes. Properties The time and space analysis of DFS differs according to its application area. In theoretical computer science, DFS is typically used to traverse an entire graph, and takes time where , V, is the number of vertices and , E, the number of edges. This is linear in the size of the graph. In these applications it also uses space O(, V, ) in the worst case to store the stack of vertices on th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Complement (complexity)
In computational complexity theory, the complement of a decision problem is the decision problem resulting from reversing the ''yes'' and ''no'' answers. Equivalently, if we define decision problems as sets of finite strings, then the complement of this set over some fixed domain is its complement problem. For example, one important problem is whether a number is a prime number. Its complement is to determine whether a number is a composite number (a number which is not prime). Here the domain of the complement is the set of all integers exceeding one. There is a Turing reduction from every problem to its complement problem. The complement operation is an involution, meaning it "undoes itself", or the complement of the complement is the original problem. One can generalize this to the complement of a complexity class, called the complement class, which is the set of complements of every problem in the class. If a class is called C, its complement is conventionally labelled co-C. No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boolean Satisfiability Problem
In logic and computer science, the Boolean satisfiability problem (sometimes called propositional satisfiability problem and abbreviated SATISFIABILITY, SAT or B-SAT) is the problem of determining if there exists an interpretation that satisfies a given Boolean formula. In other words, it asks whether the variables of a given Boolean formula can be consistently replaced by the values TRUE or FALSE in such a way that the formula evaluates to TRUE. If this is the case, the formula is called ''satisfiable''. On the other hand, if no such assignment exists, the function expressed by the formula is FALSE for all possible variable assignments and the formula is ''unsatisfiable''. For example, the formula "''a'' AND NOT ''b''" is satisfiable because one can find the values ''a'' = TRUE and ''b'' = FALSE, which make (''a'' AND NOT ''b'') = TRUE. In contrast, "''a'' AND NOT ''a''" is unsatisfiable. SAT is the first problem that was proved to be NP-complete ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exclusive Or
Exclusive or or exclusive disjunction is a logical operation that is true if and only if its arguments differ (one is true, the other is false). It is symbolized by the prefix operator J and by the infix operators XOR ( or ), EOR, EXOR, , , , , , and . The negation of XOR is the logical biconditional, which yields true if and only if the two inputs are the same. It gains the name "exclusive or" because the meaning of "or" is ambiguous when both operands are true; the exclusive or operator ''excludes'' that case. This is sometimes thought of as "one or the other but not both". This could be written as "A or B, but not, A and B". Since it is associative, it may be considered to be an ''n''-ary operator which is true if and only if an odd number of arguments are true. That is, ''a'' XOR ''b'' XOR ... may be treated as XOR(''a'',''b'',...). Truth table The truth table of A XOR B shows that it outputs true whenever the inputs differ: Equivalences, elimination, and introduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
