Golden Ticket: Chapter 7
For Your Enjoyment
Proving P ≠ NP
- To prove P = NP, a polynomial algorithm that solves an NPC
problem suffices.
- To prove P ≠ NP, a proof is needed that shows that
no possible algorithm exists.
- Negative proofs can be quite difficult. For example, Fermat posed
his last theorem in 1637 (e.g. an + bn ≠
cn for distinct natural numbers a, b, c
and n > 2) but it wasn't until 1995 that British mathematician
Andrew Wiles proved it.
