What is an NP-complete in computer science?

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What is an NP-complete problem? Why is it such an important topic in computer science?

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What is NP?

NP is the set of all decision problems (questions with a yes-or-no answer) for which the ‘yes’-answers can be verified in polynomial time (O(nk) where n is the problem size, and k is a constant) by a deterministic Turing machine. Polynomial time is sometimes used as the definition of fast or quickly.

What is P?

P is the set of all decision problems which can be solved in polynomial time by a deterministic Turing machine. Since they can be solved in polynomial time, they can also be verified in polynomial time. Therefore P is a subset of 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:

  1. x is in NP, and
  2. 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.

See also the post What’s “P=NP?”, and why is it such a famous question?

What is NP-Hard?

NP-Hard are problems that are at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP. Note that NP-Complete problems are also NP-hard. However not all NP-hard problems are NP (or even a decision problem), despite having NP as a prefix. That is the NP in NP-hard does not mean non-deterministic polynomial time. Yes, this is confusing, but its usage is entrenched and unlikely to change.

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