Classical computer science textbooks tell us that some problems are 'hard'. Yet many areas, from machine learning and computer vision to theorem proving and software verification, have defined their own set of tools for effectively solving complex problems. Tractability provides an overview of these different techniques, and of the fundamental concepts and properties used to tame intractability. This book will help you understand what to do when facing a hard computational problem. Can the problem be modelled by convex, or submodular functions? Will the instances arising in practice be of low...