Time Complexity

Instructor: Dr. Safdar Abbas

Book: Prof. Sipser-MIT

Slides: Prof. Busch - LSU 1
Consider a deterministic Turing Machine M
which decides a language L

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For any string w the computation of M
terminates in a finite amount of transitions


Initial Accept
state or Reject w

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 Decision Time = #transitions


Initial Accept
state or Reject w

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Consider now all strings of length n

TM (n ) = maximum time required to decide

any string of length n

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TIME TM (n )

1 2 3 4  n 
STRING LENGTH

Max time to accept a string of length n

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Time Complexity Class: TIME (T (n ))

All Languages decidable by a

deterministic Turing Machine
in time O (T (n ))

L1 L2
L3
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Example: L1  {a b : n  0}
n

This can be decided in O (n ) time

TIME (n )

L1  {a b : n  0}
n

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Other example problems in the same class

TIME (n )

L1  {a b : n  0}
n

{ab aba : n , k  0}
n

{b : n is even }
n

{b : n  3k }
n

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Examples in class:

TIME (n ) 2

{a b : n  0}
n n

{ww : w  {a , b }}

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Examples in class:
TIME (n ) 3

CYK algorithm
L2  { G ,w : w is generated by
context - free grammar G }

Matrix multiplication
L3  { M1 , M2, M3 : n  n matrices
and M1  M2  M3 }

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Polynomial time algorithms: TIME (n )
k

constant k  0

Represents tractable algorithms:

for small k we can decide
the result fast

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It can be shown:

TIME (n k 1 )

TIME (n ) k

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The Time Complexity Class P

P  TIME (n k
)
k 0

Represents:
•polynomial time algorithms

•“tractable” problems
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 Class P
{a b }
n

{a b }
n n
{ww }

CYK-algorithm

Matrix multiplication

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 nk
Exponential time algorithms: TIME (2 )

Represent intractable algorithms:

Some problem instances
may take centuries to solve

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Example: the Hamiltonian Path Problem

s t

Question: is there a Hamiltonian path

from s to t?

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s t

YES!

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A solution: search exhaustively all paths

L = {<G,s,t>: there is a Hamiltonian path

in G from s to t}

nk
L TIME (n ! )  TIME (2 )

Exponential time

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 The clique problem

Does there exist a clique of size 5?

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 The clique problem

Does there exist a clique of size 5?

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Example: The Satisfiability Problem

Boolean expressions in
Conjunctive Normal Form:
t1  t2  t3    tk clauses

ti  x1  x2  x3    x p
Variables

Question: is the expression satisfiable?

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 Example: ( x1  x2 )  ( x1  x3 )

Satisfiable: x1  0, x2  1, x3  1

( x1  x2 )  ( x1  x3 )  1

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Example: ( x1  x2 )  x1  x2

Not satisfiable

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 L  {w : expression w is satisfiabl e}

nk
L TIME (2 )
exponential

Algorithm:
search exhaustively all the possible
binary values of the variables
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 Non-Determinism
Language class: NTIME (T (n ))

L1
L3
L2

A Non-Deterministic Turing Machine

decides each string of length n
in time O (T (n ))
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Non-Deterministic Polynomial time algorithms:

k
L  NTIME (n )

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 The class NP

NP  NTIME (n k
)
k 0

Non-Deterministic Polynomial time

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 Example: The satisfiability problem

L  {w : expression w is satisfiabl e}

Non-Deterministic algorithm:
•Guess an assignment of the variables

•Check if this is a satisfying assignment

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 L  {w : expression w is satisfiabl e}

Time for n variables:

•Guess an assignment of the variables O(n)

•Check if this is a satisfying assignment O(n)

Total time: O(n)

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 L  {w : expression w is satisfiabl e}

L  NP

The satisfiability problem is an NP - Problem

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Observation:

P  NP

Deterministic Non-Deterministic
Polynomial Polynomial

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Open Problem: P  NP ?

Example: Does the Satisfiability problem

have a polynomial time
deterministic algorithm?

WE DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWER

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 Is P = NP ?

Get US $ 1,000,000 prize for the first

correct solution.

It is one of the seven Millennium Prize

Problems selected by the Clay
Mathematics Institute

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Merci Beaucoup!

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