Pseudo-polynomial time


In computational complexity theory, a numeric algorithm runs in pseudo-polynomial time if its running time is a polynomial in the numeric value of the input — but not necessarily in the length of the input, which is the case for polynomial time algorithms.
In general, the numeric value of the input is exponential in the input length, which is why a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm does not necessarily run in polynomial time with respect to the input length.
An NP-complete problem with known pseudo-polynomial time algorithms is called weakly NP-complete.
An NP-complete problem is called strongly NP-complete if it is proven that it cannot be solved by a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm unless P=NP. The strong/weak kinds of NP-hardness are defined analogously.

Examples

Primality testing

Consider the problem of testing whether a number n is prime, by naively checking whether no number in divides evenly. This approach can take up to divisions, which is sub-linear in the value of n but exponential in the length of n. For example, a number n slightly less than would require up to approximately 100,000 divisions, even though the length of n is only 11 digits. Moreover one can easily write down an input for which this algorithm is impractical. Since computational complexity measures difficulty with respect to the length of the input, this naive algorithm is actually exponential. It is, however, pseudo-polynomial time.
Contrast this algorithm with a true polynomial numeric algorithm — say, the straightforward algorithm for addition: Adding two 9-digit numbers takes around 9 simple steps, and in general the algorithm is truly linear in the length of the input. Compared with the actual numbers being added, the algorithm could be called "pseudo-logarithmic time", though such a term is not standard. Thus, adding 300-digit numbers is not impractical. Similarly, long division is quadratic: an m-digit number can be divided by a n-digit number in steps
In the case of primality, it turns out there is a different algorithm for testing whether n is prime, which runs in time.

Knapsack problem

In the knapsack problem, we are given items with weight and value, along with a maximum weight capacity of a knapsack.
The goal is to solve the following optimization problem; informally, what's the best way to fit the items into the knapsack to maximize value?
Solving this problem is NP-hard, so a polynomial time algorithm is impossible unless P=NP. However, an time algorithm is possible using dynamic programming; since the number only needs bits to describe, this algorithm runs in pseudo-polynomial time.

Generalizing to non-numeric problems

Although the notion of pseudo-polynomial time is used almost exclusively for numeric problems, the concept can be generalized:
The function m is pseudo-polynomial if
m is no greater than a polynomial function of the problem size n and an additional property of the input, k.
This makes numeric polynomial problems a special case by taking k to be the numeric value of the input.
The distinction between the value of a number and its length is one of encoding: if numeric inputs are always encoded in unary, then pseudo-polynomial would coincide with polynomial.