Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness (Series of Books in the Mathematical Sciences)

This book's introduction features a humorous story of a man with a line of people behind him, who explains to his boss, "I can't find an efficient algorithm, but neither can all these famous people." This man illustrates an important quality of a class of problems, namely, the NP-complete problems: if you can prove that a problem is in this class, then it has no known polynomial-time solution that is guaranteed to work in general. This quality implies that the problem is difficult to deal with in practice. The focus of this book is to teach the reader how to identify, deal with, and understand the essence of NP-complete problems; Computers and Intractability does all of those things effectively. In a readable yet mathematically rigorous manner, the book covers topics such as how to prove that a given problem is NP-complete and how to cope with NP-complete problems. (There is even a chapter on advanced topics, with numerous references.) Computers and Intractability also contains a list of more than 300 problems--most of which are known to be NP-complete--with comments and references. "Shows how to recognize NP-complete problems and offers proactical suggestions for dealing with them effectively. The book covers the basic theory of NP-completeness, provides an overview of alternative directions for further research, and contains and extensive list of NP-complete and NP-hard problems, with more than 300 main entries and several times as many results in total. [This book] is suitable as a supplement to courses in algorithm design, computational complexity, operations research, or combinatorial mathematics, and as a text for seminars on approximation algorithms or computational complexity. It provides not only a valuable source of information for students but also an essential reference work for professionals in computer science"--Back cover In computer science, more specifically computational complexity theory, Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness is an influential textbook by Michael Garey and David S. Johnson. It was the first book exclusively on the theory of NP-completeness and computational intractability. The book features an appendix providing a thorough compendium of NP-complete problems (which was updated in later printings of the book). The book is now outdated in some respects as it does not cover more recent development such as the PCP theorem. It is nevertheless still in print and is regarded as a classic: in a 2006 study, the CiteSeer search engine listed the book as the most cited reference in computer science literature. Contents Preface Computers, Complexity, and Intractability The Theory of NP-Completeness Proving NP-Completeness Results Using NP-Completeness to Analyze Problems NP-Hardness Coping with NP-Complete Problems Beyond NP-Completeness A List of NP-Complete Problems Symbol Index Reference and Author Index Subject Index Update for the Current Printing Michael R. Garey, David S. Johnson. Includes Indexes. Includes Update For The Second Printing. Bibliography: P. [291]-325.