Bachelor 2025/2026

Computational Complexity Theory

Type: Elective course (Software Engineering)

Delivered by: Big Data and Information Retrieval School

When: 4 year, 1-3 module

Open to: students of one campus

Language: English

Contact hours: 60

Course Syllabus

Abstract

This course teaches a mathematical theory that helps to invent better algorithms. With “better” we mean that the algorithms use fewer resources such as time or memory. We also consider parallel computation, distributed systems and learning problems. In these settings we might also optimize other types of resources. For example, in distributed systems we might want to minimize the amount of communication. We focuss on worst case guarantees. A large part of our time is devoted to the study of what is not possible. In other words, we study fundamental barriers for the existence of programs that use fewer resources than a given bound.