Changes of Mathematical State

Untangling a web of conflicting demands can be tough on computers

The frazzled host of an impending dinner party is trying to come up with a seating plan that would satisfy his guests.

Each point on this graph shows the relative computational effort required to solve a given satisfiability problem or show that it’s insoluble. For so-called 3-SAT problems, researchers find a sharp transition between problems that are solvable (blue dots) and those that turn out to be impossible to solve (red dots) when the ratio of constraints to variables is about 4.25