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P Vs NP

This document discusses the P vs NP problem, one of the Millennium Problems in mathematics. It describes that P vs NP is one of the biggest unsolved problems in computer science involving whether problems that are easy to check or verify (NP problems) can also be solved easily (P problems). It provides examples of NP problems and describes what NP-complete problems are. Experts like Michael Sipser emphasize the importance of solving P vs NP for understanding computational complexity and cryptography.

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Angel Blaze Candinato
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134 views11 pages

P Vs NP

This document discusses the P vs NP problem, one of the Millennium Problems in mathematics. It describes that P vs NP is one of the biggest unsolved problems in computer science involving whether problems that are easy to check or verify (NP problems) can also be solved easily (P problems). It provides examples of NP problems and describes what NP-complete problems are. Experts like Michael Sipser emphasize the importance of solving P vs NP for understanding computational complexity and cryptography.

Uploaded by

Angel Blaze Candinato
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Do you want to

be a Millionaire?
P vs NP
The Millennium Problems Are 7 Math
Problems Worth $1 Million Each

• P vs. NP Problem
• Riemann Hypothesis
• Yang–Mills and Mass Gap
• Navier–Stokes Equation
• Hodge Conjecture
• Poincaré Conjecture
• Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture
•The P Versus NP Problem
Is One of Computer
Science's Biggest Unsolved
Problems
Brief History
• The underlying issues were first discussed in the 1950s, in letters from John
Forbes Nash Jr. to the National Security Agency, and from Kurt
Gödel to John von Neumann. The precise statement of
the P versus NP problem was introduced in 1971 by Stephen Cook in his
seminal paper "The complexity of theorem proving procedures"[3] (and
independently by Leonid Levin in 1973[4]) and is considered by many to be
the most important open problem in computer science.[5]
• First discuss in 1950 but formal introduced as p vs np in 1971
What is P vs NP?
• P stands for Polynomial Time
• NP stands for nondeterministic polynomial time
• P stands for problems that are easy to solve, and NP stands for problems
that are not easy to solve but are easy for them to check.
P NP
• Easy to solve • Hard to solve
• Easy to check or verify • Easy to check or verify
NP
Jigsaw puzzle

P
34
* 5
Examples:
• A traveling salesman wants to visit 100 different cities by driving, starting and
ending his trip at home. He has a limited supply of gasoline, so he can only
drive a total of 10,000 kilometers. He wants to know if he can visit all of the
cities without running out of gasoline.
• A farmer wants to take 100 watermelons of different masses to the market.
She needs to pack the watermelons into boxes. Each box can only hold 20
kilograms without breaking. The farmer needs to know if 10 boxes will be
enough for her to carry all 100 watermelons to market.
Is P = NP?
What is NP-Complete?
A problem x that is in NP is also in NP-Complete if and only if every other problem in
NP can be quickly (ie. in polynomial time) transformed into x.
In other words:
• x is in NP, and
• Every problem in NP is reducible to x
So, what makes NP-Complete so interesting is that if any one of the NP-Complete
problems was to be solved quickly, then all NP problems can be solved quickly.
• Michael Sipser, the head of the MIT Department of Mathematics and a member
of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab’s Theory of Computation
Group (TOC), says that the P-versus-NP problem is important for deepening
our understanding of computational complexity.
• “A major application is in the cryptography area,” Sipser says, where the security of
cryptographic codes is often ensured by the complexity of a computational task.
The RSA cryptographic scheme, which is commonly used for secure Internet
transactions — and was invented at MIT — “is really an outgrowth of the study of
the complexity of doing certain number-theoretic computations,” Sipser says.

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