Analysis of Algorithms

Complexity classes
 NP-Completeness

• NP-completeness is a form of bad news!

– Evidence that many important problems can not be
solved quickly.

• NP-complete problems really come up all the

time!

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 Why should we care?
• Knowing that they are hard lets you stop beating
your head against a wall trying to solve them…
– Use a heuristic: come up with a method for solving a
reasonable fraction of the common cases.
– Solve approximately: come up with a solution that
you can prove that is close to right.
– Use an exponential time solution: if you really have
to solve the problem exactly and stop worrying about
finding a better solution.

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 Optimization & Decision Problems
• Decision problems
– Given an input and a question regarding a problem,
determine if the answer is yes or no
• Optimization problems
– Find a solution with the “best” value
• Optimization problems can be cast as decision
problems that are easier to study
– E.g.: Shortest path: G = unweighted directed graph
• Find a path between u and v that uses the fewest
edges
• Does a path exist from u to v consisting of at most k edges?
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Algorithmic vs Problem Complexity
• The complexity of a computational problem
or task is the complexity of the algorithm with the
lowest order of growth of complexity for solving
that problem or performing that task.
– e.g. the problem of searching an ordered list has at
most lgn time complexity.

• Computational Complexity: deals with

classifying problems by how hard they are.

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 Class of “P” Problems
• Class P consists of (decision) problems that are
solvable in polynomial time
• Polynomial-time algorithms
– Worst-case running time is O(nk), for some constant k
• Examples of polynomial time:
– O(n2), O(n3), O(1), O(n lg n)
• Examples of non-polynomial time:
– O(2n), O(nn), O(n!)

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 Tractable/Intractable Problems
• Problems in P are also called tractable
• Problems not in P are intractable or unsolvable
– Can be solved in reasonable time only for small inputs
– Or, can not be solved at all

• Are non-polynomial algorithms always worst than

polynomial algorithms?
- n1,000,000 is technically tractable, but really impossible
- nlog log log n is technically intractable, but easy

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 Example of Unsolvable Problem
• Turing discovered in the 1930’s that there are
problems unsolvable by any algorithm.
• The most famous of them is the halting
problem
– Given an arbitrary algorithm and its input, will that
algorithm eventually halt, or will it continue forever in
an “infinite loop?”

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 Example of Unsolvable Problem
(n is an integer)
While n > 1 do
if Odd(n) then
n = 3n + 1
else
n = n/2

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Examples of Intractable Problems

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 Intractable Problems
• Can be classified in various categories based on
their degree of difficulty, e.g.,
– NP
– NP-complete
– NP-hard
• Let’s define NP algorithms and NP problems …

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 Nondeterministic and NP Algorithms

Nondeterministic algorithm = two stage procedure:

1) Nondeterministic (“guessing”) stage:
generate randomly an arbitrary string that can be
thought of as a candidate solution (“certificate”)

2) Deterministic (“verification”) stage:

take the certificate and the instance to the problem and
returns YES if the certificate represents a solution

NP algorithms (Nondeterministic polynomial)

verification stage is polynomial
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 Class of “NP” Problems
• Class NP consists of problems that could be
solved by NP algorithms
– i.e., verifiable in polynomial time

• If we were given a “certificate” of a solution, we

could verify that the certificate is correct in time
polynomial to the size of the input
• Warning: NP does not mean “non-polynomial”

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 E.g.: Hamiltonian Cycle
• Given: a directed graph G = (V, E), determine a
simple cycle that contains each vertex in V
– Each vertex can only be visited once
• Certificate:
– Sequence: v1, v2, v3, …, v|V| hamiltonian

not
hamiltonian

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 Is P = NP?
• Any problem in P is also in NP: P

P  NP NP

• The big (and open question) is whether NP  P

or P = NP
– i.e., if it is always easy to check a solution, should it
also be easy to find a solution?

• Most computer scientists believe that this is false

but we do not have a proof …
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 NP-Completeness (informally)
• NP-complete problems are P NP-complete

defined as the hardest

NP

problems in NP

• Most practical problems turn out to be either P or

NP-complete.

• Study NP-complete problems …

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 Reductions
• Reduction is a way of saying that one problem is
“easier” than another.
• We say that problem A is easier than problem B,
(i.e., we write “A  B”)
if we can solve A using the algorithm that solves B.
• Idea: transform the inputs of A to inputs of B

yes
  yes
f Problem B no
no
Problem A
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 Polynomial Reductions

• Given two problems A, B, we say that A is

polynomially reducible to B (A p B) if:

1. There exists a function f that converts the input of A

to inputs of B in polynomial time

2. A(i) = YES  B(f(i)) = YES

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 NP-Completeness (formally)
• A problem B is NP-complete if:
P NP-complete
(1) B  NP
NP
(2) A p B for all A  NP

• If B satisfies only property (2) we say that B is NP-hard

• No polynomial time algorithm has been discovered for an

NP-Complete problem

• No one has ever proven that no polynomial time

algorithm can exist for any NP-Complete problem

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 Implications of Reduction

yes
  yes
f Problem B no
no
Problem A

- If A p B and B  P, then A  P
- if A p B and A  P, then B  P

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 Revisit “Is P = NP?”

P NP-complete

NP

Theorem: If any NP-Complete problem can be solved

in polynomial time  then P = NP.

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 P & NP-Complete Problems
• Euler tour
– G = (V, E) a connected, directed graph find a cycle
that traverses each edge of G exactly once (may visit
a vertex multiple times)
– Polynomial solution O(E)

• Hamiltonian cycle
– G = (V, E) a connected, directed graph find a cycle
that visits each vertex of G exactly once
– NP-complete

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Examples NP-complete and
NP-hard problems

NP-complete

NP-hard

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