Essays on the Complexity of Continuous Problems

This book contains five essays on the complexity of continuous problems, written for a wider audience. The first four essays are based on talks presented in 2008 when Henryk Wozniakowski received an honorary doctoral degree from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. The focus is on the introduction and history of the complexity of continuous problems, as well as on recent progress concerning the complexity of high-dimensional numerical problems. The last essay provides a brief and informal introduction to the basic notions and concepts of information-based complexity addressed to a general readership.