Topics in Intractability: Unfulfilled Algorithmic Fantasies

Catalog description

Over the past 45 years, understanding NP-hardness has been an amazingly useful tool for algorithm designers. This course will expose students to additional ways to reason about obstacles for designing efficient algorithms. Topics will include unconditional lower bounds (query- and communication-complexity), total problems, Unique Games, average-case complexity, and fine-grained complexity. Prerequisites: CS 161 or equivalent. CS 254 recommended but not required.