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Mathematics

What Cannot Be Done Quickly

Costs that grow politely or catastrophically, thousands of problems that are one, and what gets solved anyway

Cook and Levin · Karp · the Clay prize · the simplex method · 3 chapters · 8 min read

Costs that grow politely or catastrophically, thousands of problems that are one problem, and what gets solved anyway.

Free to read: every chapter below is open

Complexity

  1. 01How Fast the Work GrowsOn the only question worth asking about a method.
  2. 02The Hardest Problems Are One ProblemOn several thousand problems that turn out to be one problem.
  3. 03Hard in Theory, Solved in PracticeOn the gap between a theorem about every input and a Tuesday afternoon.