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Re:An algorithm for the Names at the 9/11 Memorial by kenjackson on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @12:24AM (#2531315)
Actually, solving most practical instances of NP hard problems is doable and quite tractable.

Isn't that a tautology? Because if it wasn't doable then it wouldn't be practical.

Re:An algorithm for the Names at the 9/11 Memorial by eru on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @07:12AM (#2532058)
Practical here means: Occurs in practice. And that they are optimally solvable in practice is not a tautology. It could be that you would need human insight (like you still need for most proving interesting mathematical theorems), or that people would only solve approximations. (People do solve approximations, too.)