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Why do computer scientists need Oracles Magic 8 Like Ball


The original version to This story Appear How many magazines.

Ask a question on a magic ball 8, and it will answer yes, no, or something uninterrupted annoyingly. We are thinking about a child’s heel, but theoretical computer scientists use a similar tool. They often imagine that they can consult the virtual devices called Oracles, which can immediately answer and correct specific questions. The experiences of fictional thought inspired these new algorithms and helped researchers set the scene of the account.

Researchers who cite an oacles in a computer science field called the theory of arithmetic complexity. They are interested in the difficulty inherent in problems such as determining whether the number is the first or finding the shortest path between two points in the network. It is easy to solve some problems, and others seem to be much more difficult but it has easy -to -check solutions, while others are still easy Quantum computers But it seems difficult for that normal.

The theorists want to understand whether these clear differences in the difficulty are essential. Is there something essential difficult about some problems, or are we not smart enough to reach a good solution? The researchers address these questions by sorting problems to “Plain lessons-All easy problems go in one chapter, for example, all easy problems to verify another-and proving theories about the relationships between those groups.

Unfortunately, a maps of the scene of the arithmetic difficulty turned to be difficult. So in the mid -seventies of the twentieth century, some researchers began studying what will happen if the rules of account are different. This is the place where the Awrakles comes.

Like Magic 8 Balls, Oracles are devices that immediately answer questions yes or do not reveal anything about their internal work. Unlike Magic 8 balls, they always say, either yes or no, and they are always right – the advantage of being fictional. In addition, you will not only answer any specific oracles on a specific type of questions, such as “Is this the main number?”

What makes these fictional devices useful for understanding the real world? In short, they can detect hidden connections between the different complexity categories.

Take the most famous complexity categories. There is a category of problems that are easy to solve, which researchers call “P”, and a group of easily verified problems, which researchers call “NP”. Are all easy -to -check problems also solve? If so, this means that NP will be equal to P, and all encryption will be It is easy to crack (Among the other consequences). The theorists are suspected that NP is not equal to P, but they cannot prove this, although they were trying to determine the relationship between the two categories More than 50 years old.

Oracles helped them understand what they are doing better. The researchers invented the erukles that answer questions that help solve many different problems. In a world where each computer had a hotline for one of these papers, it will be easy to solve all the easy to check, and it will be equal to P np. But the other less useful Oracles has an opposite effect. In a world inhabited by these erukles, P and NP will be clearly different.

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