3.18 Undecidable Problems
Enduring Understanding
There exist problems that computers cannot solve, and even when a computer can solve a problem, it may not be able to do so in a reasonable amount of time.
Learning Objective
Explain the existence of undecidable problems in computer science.
Essential Knowledge
A decidable problem is a decision problem for which an algorithm can be written to produce a correct output for all inputs (e.g., “Is the number even?”).
An undecidable problem is one for which no algorithm can be constructed that is always capable of providing a correct yes-or-no answer.
An undecidable problem may have some instances that have an algorithmic solution, but there is no algorithmic solution that could solve all instances of the problem.
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