We can categorize the problem space into two

parts
Solvable Problems
Unsolvable problems
7/11/2011 1
P,NP, NP-Hard and NP-Complete
Given a description of a program and a finite
input, decide whether the program finishes
running in a finite time or will run forever,
given that input
The halting problem is famous because it was one of
the first problems proved undecidable, which means
there is no computer program capable of correctly
answering the question for all possible inputs
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Halting Problem
U1 U2 U3 U4
aba bbb aab bb
V1 v2 v3 v4
a aaa abab babba
A solution to this problem would be the sequence 1, 4, 3, 1
because
u
1
u
4
u
3
u
1
= aba + bb + aab + aba = ababbaababa = a + babba +
abab + a = v
1
v
4
v
3
v
1
The problemis to find whether such a solution exists or not
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Post Correspondence Problem
From not solvable we come to the concept of
how well we can solve the problems
logn- logaritihmic time
n- linear time
nlogn near linear time
n
2
square time
n
3
cubic time
n
4
--- n
k
- higher polynomial or super polynomial
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Moving towards solution
All those algorithms that can be solved in polynomial time
with worst case running time as O(n
k
). So these problems are
regarded as tractable.
A problem that can be solved polynomially in one model can
also be solved polynomially in other model.
P Class of Problems
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If the result of every operation is uniquely
defined then we call that algorithm as
deterministic algorithm.
If we remove this notion and we say that the
output of an operation is not unique but limited
to a set of possibilities
In theoretical computer science, a non-
deterministic Turing machine (NTM) is a Turing
machine (TM) in which state transitions are not
uniquely defined.
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Determinism
A Non deterministic algorithm for searching
an element x in a given set of elements A[1..n]
1. j= choice(1,n)
2. if A[j]=x then write (j); Success
3. else write(0); Failure
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Non determinism
Algorithm Nsort
For i=1 to n do B[i]=0;
for i=1to n do
{ j= choice(1,n);
if b[j]<>0 then failure();
B[j] = a[i]
}
for i= 1 to n-1 do
if B[i] > B[i+1] then failure;
success();
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Non determinsitic sorting
It is the set of all problems that can be solved
in polynomial time with non-deterministic
concept.
However this concept only exists in theory.
There are no implementations what so ever.
7/11/2011 9
Non-determininstic Polynomial (NP)
A decision problem is that problem which can
have only two options as its solution space i.e.
yes or no.
Whether x is a prime number is also a decision
problem that will have answer yes or no.
For a Travelling salesperson problem the
question that whether a tour of cost < k exists
is a decision problem.
7/11/2011 10
Decision Problems
So for many problems it will be like guess &
verify situation.
We will guess a particular solution and then
verify that whether this is the solution (yes) or
not ( no)
If this guessing and verifying can be done in
polynomial time with the help of a non
deterministic concept then we say that the
problem is in NP
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Guess & verify
Satisfiability is the problem of determining if the
variables of a given Boolean formula can be
assigned in such a way as to make the formula
evaluate to TRUE. Equally important is to
determine whether no such assignments exist,
which would imply that the function expressed by
the formula is identically FALSE for all possible
variable assignments. In this latter case, we would
say that the function is unsatisfiable; otherwise it
is satisfiable. To emphasize the binary nature of
this problem, it is frequently referred to as
Boolean or propositional satisfiability.
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Satisfiability Problem
if f(x
1
,x
2
,x
n
) = True
x
i
= 0 or 1
we have to find x
1
,x
2
,x
3
x
n
such that f(b
1
,b
2
,b
3
b
n
)=1 where b1= 0 or 1,b2= 0 or
1.. bn = 0 or 1
2
n
different permutations, someone out of that can
give answer as 1 (true)
guess
?f(1,0,1,0,0,1 ..,1,0) = 1
verify ( evaluate the function)
ability to guess and verify in polynomial time
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Satisfiability Problem
The complexity class P is contained in NP but
the vice versa has not been proved and
proving whether p= NP remains the biggest
research question.
Cook Formulated a question that is there any
single problem in NP such that if we showed it
to be in P, then that would imply P=NP
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COOK theorem
Given an instance x of a problem A, use a
polynomial time reduction algorithm to
transform it to instance y of problem B.
Run the polynomial time algorithm for B on
instance y
use the answer for y as the answer for x.
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reducibility
This problem A can be decision problem for
some problem or a decision version for
optimization problem. It may be or may not
be part of NP class of problems. We call such
problems as NP hard problems if they can be
reduced to another problem B in polynomial
time and then then that problem B can be
solved in polynomial time and then that result
of B can be used for giving solution of A in
polynomial time.
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NP Hard
if Problem is NP-hard and problem belongs to NP
then it is NP-complete.
Problems are designated "NP-complete" if their
solutions can be quickly checked for correctness,
and if the same solving algorithm used can solve
all other NP problems. They are the most difficult
problems in NP in the sense that a deterministic,
polynomial-time solution to any NP-complete
problem would provide a solution to every other
problem in NP
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NP complete
So we are able to correlate one problem which is NP
hard with the another problem which is also NP hard
and so we can say that if one of them can be solved in
polynomial time then another can also be solved in
polynomial time. Similarly it can be proved for all
problems in NP.
But the problem is that we dont have any polynomial
solution for any of the problems in NP included both
discussed. And also there is almost no hope. Only thing
we can say here is that it has not been proved that
P=NP and neither it has been proved that P<> NP so
that can give us a little hope to work on and on.
7/11/2011 18
Final judgement
The time and resources of researchers taken by
P=NP question exceeds any other problem in
computer science.
Most of the people are coming out with proof P
NP which is yet to be verified. So there are more
voters of P NP theory.
The scientists are not waiting for the final word
on this question to come and then think about
the next strategy.
The Problems that are in question under this
dilemma are so important in our daily life and for
the society that these can not be left unsolved.
Finding optimal solutions for specific
categories
Looking at the characteristics of the problem it
should be explored whether it can be treated as
some special case of a NP-complete problem or
we can take advantage of any special feature or
additional information given in the problem.
Vertex cover is NP-complete but finding vertex
cover for a bipartite graph can be done in
polynomial time.
Pseudo polynomial time algorithms may be
better then their exponential counterparts.
(An algorithm is said to run in pseudo polynomial
time if its runtime is polynomial in the size of the
input instance when the numbers in the input are
represented in unary. Decimal 9 Binary 1001
Unary 111111111
Finding optimal solutions to NP-Complete problems
Exponential algorithms may be adequate if problem
size is small or problemis to be solved once.
Some heuristics may be used which work well in
practice but does not give any guarantees.
Given the available resources, If exact solution is not
available then we will try to find out a solution which is
near to the optimal solution and this may be done in
polynomial time.
Difficult part is that at least we need to prove a
solutions value is close to optimum ( and to what
extent), without even knowing what optimumvalue is!
Approximation factor
If SV
A
(i) : Solution value using AlgorithmA on instance i
SV
OPT
(i): Solution value using AlgorithmOPT on instance i
Assuming cost is positive always.
For Minimization problems : SV
OPT
(i) < SV
A
(i)
And for Maximization Problems : SV
OPT
(i) > SV
A
(i)
Approximation factor
i
or ratio
i
=
SV
A
(i)/ SV
OPT
(i) for Minimization
SV
OPT
(i)/ SV
A
(i) for Maximization
Approximation factor of A(n) = max{ approx. factors of all
the instances of i of size n}
Objective of approximation
Goal of the approximation algorithms is to
design an algorithm such that approximation
factor is as small as possible which means that
we can go as close to the exact solution as
possible in the polynomial time.
It will be good if in some cases the complexity
of the algorithm can be calculated in terms of
the input size as well as the approximation
factor.
PTAS and FPTAS
Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme: It takes two
arguments , an instance of the problem and a
parameter > 0 and, in polynomial time, produces a
solution that is within a factor 1 + .
For the TSP, a PTAS would produce a tour with length at
most (1 + )L, where L is the length of the shortest tour.
The running time of a PTAS is to be polynomial in n for
every fixed but can be different for different .
If the time is also polynomial in 1/ then it is called
fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS).
FPTAS for knapsack problemis n
3
/
Vertex cover
Input: graph G=(V,E) Output : A subset S of V,
such that, for every (u,v) in E, u is in S or v is in S.
OPT-VERTEX-COVER: A subset with smallest
size, which is NP-hard.
2-Approximation for vertex cover
1. Pick any edge {u,v} from set E of G
2. add both u & v to S
3. Delete u & v and all the incident edges from G
4. Repeat until any edge remains in G
Time taken by the above greedy algorithm is (V+E)
Output depends on the order we visit edges
Proof for 2-approximation vertex
cover
Every chosen edge e has both ends in S
But e must be covered by an optimal cover; hence,
one end of e must be in OPT
Thus, there is at most twice as many vertices in C as
in OPT.
That is, S is a 2-approximation of OPT
Best approximation ratio
2- (1/sqrt(logn)) [G Karakostas 2009 ACM trans
on Algorithms]
Best inapproximability
(1+1/6) approximation algorithm unless P=NP
[hastad Elseveir Science Direct Theoretical
Computer Science 97]
Further approximation itself will be NP-Hard
Best approximation ratio 1.5 [christofedes,CMU]
Inapproximability 1+1/3812 [papadimitriou &
yannakakis 93]
General Approximation bound technique
- Find lower bound on OPT
- relate approximation algorithm to lower bound
Other technique can be competing with the
optimal
Techniques for Approximation
algorithms
1. Greedy Algorithms
2. Primal Dual Technique
3. Linear Programming and Rounding
4. Integer Programming