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Mere Jannery D. Serrano Bsit-Wma W32 MAT513 Discuss The Halting Problem and What It Is All About

The document discusses the halting problem. The halting problem is a decision problem that determines whether a program will run forever or terminate. Alan Turing proved in 1936 that there is no algorithm that can correctly determine if an arbitrary program will halt for all possible inputs. He demonstrated this using a simple procedure K(P) that does the opposite of what a hypothetical halting problem solver H(P,P) would specify, leading to a contradiction and showing that H cannot exist.

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48 views

Mere Jannery D. Serrano Bsit-Wma W32 MAT513 Discuss The Halting Problem and What It Is All About

The document discusses the halting problem. The halting problem is a decision problem that determines whether a program will run forever or terminate. Alan Turing proved in 1936 that there is no algorithm that can correctly determine if an arbitrary program will halt for all possible inputs. He demonstrated this using a simple procedure K(P) that does the opposite of what a hypothetical halting problem solver H(P,P) would specify, leading to a contradiction and showing that H cannot exist.

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Jannery Serrano
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mere Jannery D.

Serrano BSIT-WMA W32 MAT513


Discuss the Halting Problem and what it is all about.
Halting problem is a decision problem that decides whether programs run forever or it will just
terminate itself. Lets say for example: We represent H as the machine for solving a certain
problem (this problem is determining whether it halts or it will loop forever), and to check for the
answer we have two inputs the Procedure or Program represented as (P) and the Input itself
represented as (I), so we have now H(P,I), suppose that the program is hard coded which is
eventually in a form of string which are interpreted by the computer as bits so we arrived at the
point of view wherein we can actually make P or the program itself as an input since it is also a
data, now we have H(P,P) so the question now is Would this program halt or loops forever if it
was run by itself? Then whatever the program does it will just do the opposite; just like this:
We construct a simple procedure we have K(P), using H(P,P) as its output:
If output of H(P,P) = loops forever
Then K(P) = halts
If output of H(P,P) = halts
Then K(P)= loops forever
Therefore K(P) does the opposite of what H(P,P) specifies and contradiction happens proving
that H cannot exists because it cannot always produce a correct answer.
Who proved that the Halting problem has no solution or undecidable?
Alan Turing, a British Mathematician and Logician was the one who proved that the algorithm in
finding whether a program halts or loops forever cannot exist in the year 1936 with the help of
the Turing machine, this is not a literal machine hence this is an equation that proves Halting
Problem has no solution at all.

References:
Rosen K. (2008). Halting Problem. Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications. Quezon City:
C&E Publishing, Inc.

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