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ELI5 how P, NP, NP-Complete, and NP-Hard work? If you have a video you'd recommend that works too
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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Explain Like I'm Five
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One important addendum: complexity classes always consider how hard a problem is depending on the input size. Sorting is in P (usually
O(n*log(n)), so one of the easiest problems overall) but given a few trillion inputs, it would be pretty much impossible to solve on consumer hardware. On the other hand, problems like 3-sat, the knapsack problem or travelling salesman are all NP-hard but with small enough inputs (up to a few dozen or so), they are easy to solve, even with pen and paper and are even regularly included in puzzle books.