Smoothed Analysis of Algorithms and Heuristics

Shang-Hua Teng

Abstract: The theorists have long been challenged by the existence of remarkable algorithms and heuristics that are known by scientists and engineers to work well in practice, but whose theoretical analyses have been are negative or unconvincing. The root of the problem is that algorithms are usually analyzed in one of two ways: by worst-case or average-case analysis. The former can improperly suggest that an algorithm will perform poorly, while the latter can be unconvincing because the random inputs it considers may fail to resemble those encountered in practice.