A central goal of algorithmic research is to determine how fast computational problems can
be solved in the worst case. Theorems from complexity theory state that there are problems
that, on inputs of size n, can be solved in t (n) time but not in O (t (n) 1− ε) time for ε> 0. The
main challenge is to determine where in this hierarchy various natural and important
problems lie. Throughout the years, many ingenious algorithmic techniques have been
developed and applied to obtain blazingly fast algorithms for many problems. Nevertheless …