Theory of Computation (TOC)

GTU # 3160704

Unit – 7
Undecidability

Prof. Dixita B. Kagathara

Computer Engineering Department
Darshan Institute of Engineering & Technology, Rajkot
[email protected]
+91 - 97277 47317 (CE Department)
 Topics to be covered
 Looping
• Basic Definitions
• A Language That Can’t Be Accepted, and a Problem
That Can’t Be Decided
• Post‘s Correspondence Problem
• The Class P and NP
Decidability and Undecidability
Recursive Language
 A language L is said to be recursive if there exist a Turing machine which will accept
all the strings in L and reject all the strings not in L.
 The Turing machine will halt every time and given an answer (accept or reject) for
each and every string input.

Recursively Enumerable Language

 A language L is said to be recursively enumerable language if there exists a Turing
machine which will accept (and there for halt) for all the input strings which are in ‘L’.
 But may or may not halt for all input strings which are not in ‘L’.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 3
Definitions
Decidable language
 A language L is decidable if it is a recursive language. All decidable languages are
recursive languages and vice-versa.

Partially decidable language

 A language ‘L’ is partially decidable if ‘L’ is a recursively enumerable language.

Undecidable Language
 A language is undecidable if it is not decidable.
 An undecidable language may sometimes be partially decidable but not decidable.
 If a language is not even partially decidable, then there exists no Turing machine for
that language.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 4
Summary

Recursive Language TM will always halt

Recursively Enumerable Language TM will halt sometime & may not halt some times
Decidable Language Recursive language
Partially decidable Language Recursively Enumerable language
UNDECIDABLE No TM for that Language

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 5
 A Language That Can’t Be Accepted, and a Problem That Can’t Be Decide
 The set of descriptions, which are strings over some alphabet , is countable, the
same size as the set of recursively enumerable languages; maybe whenever there is
a precise finite description of a language L, there is an algorithm to accept L.
 As it turns out, not only can we describe a language that is not recursively
enumerable, but we can do it by using the same diagonal argument that we used for
the uncountability result.
 We showed that for every list A0, A1, . . . of subsets of N, there is a subset A of N that
is not in the list. The fact that the sets A i were in a list was not crucial; here are the
crucial steps.
1. We started with a collection of subsets A i of N, each one associated with a specific element of N
(namely, i).
2. We defined another subset A, containing the elements i of N that do not belong to the subset A i
associated with i.
 The conclusion was that for each i, A = Ai , because i ∈ A ⇔ i /∈ Ai .
 Now we want to find a language L ⊆ {0, 1}∗ that cannot be accepted by a Turing
machine. in other words, a language that is different from L(T), for every Turing
Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 6
 A Language That Can’t Be Accepted, and a Problem That Can’t Be Decide
 The string e(T) “associated with” L(T), just as i is associated with A i , and we can
repeat the argument as follows:
1. We have a collection of subsets L(T) of {0, 1}∗ , each one associated with a specific element of {0,
1}∗ (namely, e(T)).
2. We define another subset L, containing the elements e(T) of {0, 1}∗ that do not belong to the
subset L(T) associated with e(T).
 The conclusion this time is that for each T , L = L(T), because e(T) ∈ L ⇔ e(T) ∉
L(T).

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 7
 Post‘s Correspondence Problem
 The Post Correspondence Problem (PCP), introduced by Emil Post in 1946, is an
undecidable decision problem. The PCP problem over an alphabet ∑ is stated as
follows:
 Given the following two lists, M and N of non-empty strings over ∑ −
M = (x1, x2, x3,………, xn)
N = (y1, y2, y3,………, yn)
 We can say that there is a Post Correspondence Solution, if for some i1,i 2,………… ik
, where 1 ≤ i j ≤ n, the condition x i1 …….xik = yi1 …….yik satisfies.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 8
 Post‘s Correspondence Problem
Example 1:
 Find whether the lists M = (abb, aa, aaa) and N = (bba, aaa, aa) have a Post
Correspondence Solution?
 Solution:
x1 x2 x3
M abb aa aaa
N bba aaa aa

 Here, x2x1x3 = ‘aaabbaaa’ and y2y1y3 = ‘aaabbaaa’

 We can see that x2x1x3 = y2y1y3 Hence, the solution is i = 2, j = 1, and k = 3.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 9
 Post‘s Correspondence Problem
Example 2:
 Find whether the lists M = (ab, bab, bbaaa) and N = (a, ba, bab) have a Post
Correspondence Solution?
 Solution
x1 x2 x3
M ab bab bbaaa
N a ba bab

 In this case, there is no solution because −| x2x1x3 | ≠ | y2y1y3 | (Lengths are not same)
 Hence, it can be said that this Post Correspondence Problem is undecidable.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 10
The Class P and NP
P-Class
 The class P consists of those problems that are solvable in polynomial time, i.e.
these problems can be solved in time O(nk) in worst-case, where k is constant.
 These problems are called tractable, while others are called intractable or
superpolynomial.
 Formally, an algorithm is polynomial time algorithm, if there exists a polynomial p(n)
such that the algorithm can solve any instance of size n in a time O(p(n)).
 Problem requiring Ω(n50) time to solve are essentially intractable for large n. Most
known polynomial time algorithm run in time O(nk) for fairly low value of k.
 The advantages in considering the class of polynomial-time algorithms is that all
reasonable deterministic single processor model of computation can be simulated on each
other with at most a polynomial slow-d.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 11
The Class P and NP
NP-Class
 The class NP consists of those problems that are verifiable in polynomial time. NP is
the class of decision problems for which it is easy to check the correctness of a
claimed answer, with the aid of a little extra information. Hence, we aren’t asking for
a way to find a solution, but only to verify that an alleged solution really is correct.
 Every problem in this class can be solved in exponential time using exhaustive
search.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 12
P v/s NP
 Every decision problem that is solvable by a deterministic polynomial time algorithm
is also solvable by a polynomial time non-deterministic algorithm.
 All problems in P can be solved with polynomial time algorithms, whereas all
problems in NP - P are intractable.
 It is not known whether P = NP. However, many problems are known in NP with the
property that if they belong to P, then it can be proved that P = NP.
 If P ≠ NP, there are problems in NP that are neither in P nor in NP-Complete.
 The problem belongs to class P if it’s easy to find a solution for the problem. The
problem belongs to NP, if it’s easy to check a solution that may have been very
tedious to find.

Prof. Dixita
Jay R Dhamsaniya
B Kagathara #3130006
#3160704
(PS) (TOC)
 Unit1 Unit
– Basic
7 – Probability
Undecidability 13
Thank You