Average-case complexity

In computational complexity theory, the average-case complexity of an algorithm is the amount of some computational resource (typically time) used by the algorithm, averaged over all possible inputs. It is frequently contrasted with worst-case complexity which considers the maximal complexity of the algorithm over all possible inputs.

Comment
enIn computational complexity theory, the average-case complexity of an algorithm is the amount of some computational resource (typically time) used by the algorithm, averaged over all possible inputs. It is frequently contrasted with worst-case complexity which considers the maximal complexity of the algorithm over all possible inputs.
Has abstract
enIn computational complexity theory, the average-case complexity of an algorithm is the amount of some computational resource (typically time) used by the algorithm, averaged over all possible inputs. It is frequently contrasted with worst-case complexity which considers the maximal complexity of the algorithm over all possible inputs. There are three primary motivations for studying average-case complexity. First, although some problems may be intractable in the worst-case, the inputs which elicit this behavior may rarely occur in practice, so the average-case complexity may be a more accurate measure of an algorithm's performance. Second, average-case complexity analysis provides tools and techniques to generate hard instances of problems which can be utilized in areas such as cryptography and derandomization. Third, average-case complexity allows discriminating the most efficient algorithm in practice among algorithms of equivalent best case complexity (for instance Quicksort). Average-case analysis requires a notion of an "average" input to an algorithm, which leads to the problem of devising a probability distribution over inputs. Alternatively, a randomized algorithm can be used. The analysis of such algorithms leads to the related notion of an expected complexity.
Hypernym
Amount
Is primary topic of
Average-case complexity
Label
enAverage-case complexity
Link from a Wikipage to an external page
research.microsoft.com/~gurevich/Opera/76.pdf
www-cse.ucsd.edu/~russell/average.ps
web.archive.org/web/20090214175940/http:/www.itl.nist.gov/div897/sqg/dads/HTML/theta.html
www.cs.nyu.edu/csweb/Research/TechReports/TR1995-711/TR1995-711.pdf
Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage
Algorithm
Amortized analysis
Art of Computer Programming
Association for Computing Machinery
Best, worst and average case
Category:Randomized algorithms
Computational complexity theory
CoNP
Cryptography
Derandomization
Discrete log
Donald Knuth
EXP
Hamiltonian path problem
Integer factorization
Leonid Levin
NEXP
Non-deterministic Turing machine
NP (complexity)
NP-complete
NP-complete problems
One-way functions
P (complexity)
Probabilistic analysis of algorithms
Probability distribution
Quicksort
Randomized algorithm
Symposium on Theory of Computing
University of California, San Diego
Worst-case complexity
SameAs
4UDN4
Average-case complexity
Complexidade de caso médio
Complexité en moyenne des algorithmes
m.04gg5fk
Q4828244
Сложеност просечног случаја
Сложность алгоритма в среднем
پیچیدگی حالت متوسط
Subject
Category:Randomized algorithms
WasDerivedFrom
Average-case complexity?oldid=1073706948&ns=0
WikiPageLength
19914
Wikipage page ID
15383952
Wikipage revision ID
1073706948
WikiPageUsesTemplate
Template:Citation
Template:Redirect
Template:Reflist
Template:Rp