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From: andrewt@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Andrew Tuson)
Subject: Re: "AI Complete" vs the Root Analysis
Message-ID: <DDrDuz.8zt@aisb.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Network News Administrator)
Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland
References: <41d64d$ped@Mars.mcs.com> <MIKEW.95Aug22151617@hobbes.cs.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 10:16:10 GMT
Lines: 28

In article <MIKEW.95Aug22151617@hobbes.cs.washington.edu> mikew@hobbes.cs.washington.edu (Mike Williamson) writes:
>In article <41d64d$ped@Mars.mcs.com> jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) writes:
>
>   (The term is a back-formation from the 'NP-complete' of computation
>   theory, which I believe means that a problem can be *proven* to be
>   insoluble...?)
>
>In fact, "NP-complete" means nothing even vaguely like that...[snip]

I think that the problem here is that misunderstanding of the term is common,
mainly due IMHO to every explaination I`ve seen being in 'math-speak' and
not in plain english. This is a real problem when you consider that a large
proportion of the AI community are not mathematicians (diversity is one of the
strengths of the field - I used to be a chemist!).

I hate to admit that I`m unsure of the difference between NP-complete and
NP-hard myself...:-(

Maybe someone should post a clear explanation...(I`ve looked through
the FAQ but couldn`t find anything suitable)...


-- 
Andrew Tuson (andrewt@aisb.ed.ac.uk)

Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the
grand fallacy..........:-)
