On Exact and Approximate Solutions for Hard Problems: An Alternative Look

Abstract

We discuss in an informal, general audience style the da Costa-Doria conjecture about the independence of the P = NP hypothesis and try to briefly assess its impact on practical situations in economics. The paper concludes with a discussion of the Coppe-Cosenza procedure, which is an approximate, partly heuristic algorithm for allocation problems.P vs. NP , allocation problem, assignment problem, traveling salesman, exact solution for NP problems, approximate solutions for NP problems, undecidability, incompleteness