Title of the course:
Complexity theory
Number of contact hours per week:
Credit value:
Course coordinator(s):
Department(s):
Evaluation:
Prerequisites:
2+2
3+3
Vince Grolmusz
Department of Computer Science
oral examination and tutorial mark
A short description of the course: finite automata, Turing machines, Boolean circuits. Lower
bounds to the complexity of algorithms. Communication complexity. Decision trees, BenOr’s theorem, hierarchy theorems. Savitch theorem. Oracles. The polynomial hierarchy.
PSPACE. Randomized complexity classes. Pseudorandomness. Interactive protocols.
IP=PSPACE. Approximability theory. The PCP theorem. Parallel algorithms. Kolmogorov
complexity.
Textbook: László Lovász: Computational Complexity
(ftp://ftp.cs.yale.edu/pub/lovasz.pub/complex.ps.gz)
Further reading:
Papadimitriou: Computational Complexity (Addison Wesley, 1994)
Cormen. Leiserson, Rivest, Stein: Introduction to Algorithms; MIT Press and McGraw-Hill.