Albion College Mathematics and Computer Science Colloquium

 Title: Random Hard Problems Speaker: Harold S. Connamacher Assistant Professor Mathematics and Computer Science Albion College Albion, Michigan Abstract: If it is easy to verify the solution to a problem, is it easy to solve that problem? This is the famous P vs NP problem. There are other important open questions we can ask. Is a uniformly randomm instance of a hard to solve problem still hard to solve? Are there specific structures in the solution space to a problem that will prevent certain algorithm techniques from working? This talk explores what is currently known about these questions, and we will use the well-known problems 3-SAT and factoring as examples. The talk will also introduce some new work in defining a random problem model that has many of the properties of 3-SAT but for which we can prove behavior that we observe experimentally but not yet prove for 3-SAT. Location: Palenske 227 Date: 9/30/2010 Time: 3:10

@abstract{MCS:Colloquium:HaroldSConnamacher:2010:9:30,
author  = "{Harold S. Connamacher}",
title   = "{Random Hard Problems}",
address = "{Albion College Mathematics and Computer Science Colloquium}",
month   = "{30 September}",
year    = "{2010}"
}