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Summary: SOME POINTED QUESTIONS CONCERNING ASYMPTOTIC
LOWER BOUNDS, AND NEWS FROM THE ISOMORPHISM
FRONT
ERIC ALLENDER
Rutgers University, Department of Computer Science, Piscataway, NJ 08855-8019
USA
E-mail: allender@cs.rutgers.edu
For this volume, I have combined columns I wrote for the June, 1997 and October,
1998 Bulletin. As both are brief, and the second column refers to the first, this
seemed appropriate. The first column discusses the general question of whether
asymptotic lower bounds are of any practical use. (My answer: They are.) The
second column is in the form of a dialogue between "Q" and "A" in the format
used so successfully by Yuri Gurevich in many of his columns for the Bulletin. The
reader will kindly pardon my attempts to inject a bit of humorous style (Ža la Dave
Barry) into this discussion of recent progress on the question of whether or not
all NP-complete sets are isomorphic. The serious message of this second part of
the article: there are some very practical reasons for being interested in the very
abstract notion of isomorphism of complete sets.
1 Some Pointed Questions Concerning Asymptotic Lower
Bounds
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