TY - BOOK AU - Goldreich,Oded TI - P, NP, and NP-completeness: the basics of computational complexity SN - 9780521122542 AV - QA267.7 .G65 2010 PY - 2010/// CY - New York PB - Cambridge University Press KW - Computational complexity KW - Computer algorithms KW - Approximation theory KW - Polynomials N1 - Includes bibliographical references and index; Computer Science & Engineering N2 - "The focus of this book is the P-versus-NP Question and the theory of NP-completeness. It also provides adequate preliminaries regarding computational problems and computational models. The P-versus-NP Question asks whether or not finding solutions is harder than checking the correctness of solutions. An alternative formulation asks whether or not discovering proofs is harder than verifying their correctness. It is widely believed that the answer to these equivalent formulations is positive, and this is captured by saying that P is different from NP. Although the P-versus-NP Question remains unresolved, the theory of NP-completeness offers evidence for the intractability of specific problems in NP by showing that they are universal for the entire class. Amazingly enough, NP-complete problems exist, and furthermore, hundreds of natural computational problems arising in many different areas of mathematics and science are NP-complete" ER -