This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Lecture Notes

The names of scribes for the lectures are noted in the table below.

LEC # TOPICS LECTURE NOTES SCRIBES / LECTURERS
1 Course Overview

Review

P-Completeness and the Circuit Value Problem (CVP)
(PDF) (Courtesy of Shaun Cutts and Dr. Zulfikar Ramzan. Used with permission.) Scribe: Shaun Cutts

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
2 Alternation

Relations to Deterministic Classes
(PDF) (Courtesy of Yu Chen. Used with permission.) Scribe: Yu Chen

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
3 Polynomial Hierarchy (PDF) (Courtesy of Shanghua Teng, and Hoe Teck Wee. Used with permission.) Scribe: Hoeteck Wee

Lecturer: Shanghua Teng
4 Polynomial Hierarchy (cont.)

The Polynomial Time Hierarchy Collapses

Non-Uniform Complexity
(PDF) (Courtesy of Matthew Lepinski. Used with permission.) Scribe: Matthew Lepinski

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
5 NP and P/poly

Circuit Complexity
(PDF) (Courtesy of Adam Winkel. Used with permission.) Scribe: Adam Winkel

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
6 Relativization, The Baker-Gill-Solovay Theorem

Randomized Computation
(PDF) Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
7 BPP Error Amplification

Verifying Polynomial Identities
(PDF) (Courtesy of Abhinav Kumar. Used with permission.)

Handout (PDF)
Scribe: Abhinav Kumar

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
8 The Valiant-Vazirani Theorem

Universal Hash Functions
(PDF) (Courtesy of Aram Harrow. Used with permission.) Scribe: Aram Harrow

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
9 Counting Classes

Toda's Theorem
(PDF) (Courtesy of David Liben-Nowell. Used with permission.) Scribe: David Liben-Nowell

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
10 Quantum Computation (PDF) (Courtesy of Christopher Avrich. Used with permission.) Scribe: Christopher D. Avrich

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
11 Quantum Complexity (PDF) (Courtesy of Daniel Preda. Used with permission.) Scribe: Daniel Preda

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
12 Fourier Transform

Discrete Log Problem

Calculable Quantum Fourier Transforms

Sufficiency of these Transforms
(PDF) (Courtesy of Jonathan Herzog. Used with permission.) Scribe: Jonathan Herzog

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
13 Oracle Quantum Turing Machines (PDF) (Courtesy of Abhinav Kumar. Used with permission.) Scribe: Abhinav Kumar

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
14 Reusing Random Bits for BPP Algorithms: Definitions, Analysis (PDF) Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
15 Interactive Proofs

Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Arthur-Merlin Games
(PDF) (Courtesy of Gregory Dennis. Used with permission.)

Scribe: Gregory Dennis

Lecturer: Shanghua Teng

16 Interactive proofs of graph non-isomorphism (PDF) (Courtesy of Paul Chang. Used with permission.) Scribe: Paul M. Chang

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
17 Recap of Arthur-Merlin Games

Graph Isomorphism

Probabilistically Checkable Proofs

3SAT Approximation is NP-hard
(PDF) (Courtesy of Ronnie Misra. Used with permission.) Scribe: Ronnie Misra

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
18 #P ⊆ IP

PSPACE ⊆ IP
(PDF) (Courtesy of Sergi Elizalde (Doctor of Mathematics). Used with permission.) Scribe: Sergi Elizalde

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
19 Recall Proof Strategy of PSPACE ⊆ IP

Implicit Circuit Sat and the Proof Outline

Multilinear Polynomials

The Multilinearity Test
(PDF) (Courtesy of Kenneth McCracken. Used with permission.) Scribe: Ken McCracken

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
20 The Multilinearity Test (cont.) (PDF) (Courtesy of Jan Vondrák. Used with permission.) Scribe: Jan Vondrák

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
21 Approximating Max-Clique

Reducing Satisfiable Clauses in 3CNF
(PDF) (Courtesy of Hiroyoshi Iwashima. Used with permission.) Scribe: Hiro Iwashima

Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman
22 Derandomizing Logspace Computations (PDF) Lecturer: Daniel A. Spielman