Abstract
Algorithmic meta theorems give efficient algorithms for classes of algorithmic problems, instead of just individual problems. They unify families of algorithmic results obtained by similar techniques and thus exhibit the core of these techniques. The classes of problems are typically defined in terms of logic and structural graph theory. A well-known example of an algorithmic meta theorem is Courcelle’s Theorem, stating that all properties of graphs of bounded tree width that are definable in monadic second-order logic are decidable in linear time.
This paper is a brief and nontechnical survey of the most important algorithmic meta theorems.
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Grohe, M. (2014). Algorithmic Meta Theorems for Sparse Graph Classes. In: Hirsch, E.A., Kuznetsov, S.O., Pin, JÉ., Vereshchagin, N.K. (eds) Computer Science - Theory and Applications. CSR 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8476. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06686-8_2
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