From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 08:12:29 +0800
To: perry@piermont.com
Subject: Re: Directed Hamiltonian Path Problem
Message-ID: <01HY6QNMYGP08WYU3C@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"perry@piermont.com" 28-NOV-1995 02:02:17.85

Indeed. Its the problem with innumeracy. People don't understand that
if, say, a problem is O(2^N), and a problem of size 1000 requires a
liter of fluid, a problem of size 2000 requires 
---------------------------
	Now that I've looked at it a bit more, I would definitely agree...
exponential growth is quite a function. Incidentally, talking about it in
liters of fluid is probably not the best way to look at it, any more than
computer chips can be best defined in square centimeters. But that doesn't
change the essential conclusion; it just alters how big of a problem you
need to use. The lesson here, I believe, is to use as large of a key/etcetera
as possible... something that should be news to none, even to novices like me.
Never assume that something will require too much computing power, until the
computing power needed is not doable in the universe. Then add some, since
(for some problems) someone might figure out a clever way around them. I
worry that factoring may be one of these.
	-Allen