i Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach Draft of a book: Dated January 2007 Comments welcome! Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak Princeton University
[email protected] Not to be reproduced or distributed without the authors' permission This is an Internet draft. Some chapters are more finished than others. References and attributions are very preliminary and we apologize in advance for any omissions (but hope you will nevertheless point them out to us). Please send us bugs, typos, missing references or general comments to
[email protected] | Thank You!! ii Chapter 2 NP and NP completeness \(if φ(n) ≈ Kn2)a then this would have consequences of the greatest magnitude. That is to say, it would clearly indicate that, despite the unsolvability of the (Hilbert) Entscheidungsproblem, the mental effort of the mathematician in the case of the yes-or-no questions would be completely replaced by machines.... (this) seems to me, however, within the realm of possibility." Kurt G¨odelin a letter to John von Neumann, 1956 aIn modern terminology, if SAT has a quadratic time algorithm \I conjecture that there is no good algorithm for the traveling salesman problem. My reasons are the same as for any mathematical conjecture: (1) It is a legitimate mathematical possibility, and (2) I do not know." Jack Edmonds, 1966 \In this paper we give theorems that suggest, but do not imply, that these problems, as well as many others, will remain intractable perpetually." Richard Karp, 1972 If you have ever attempted a crossword puzzle, you know that it is much harder to solve it from scratch than to verify a solution provided by someone else.