 Hardness of approximation

The hardness of approximation refers to the difficulty of finding approximate solutions to certain optimization problems within a specified factor of the optimal solution. In computational complexity theory, it describes how hard it is to approximate the optimum value of a problem, particularly in the context of NP-hard problems. ### Key Concepts: 1. **Optimization Problems**: These are problems where the goal is to find the best solution (often a maximum or minimum) among a set of feasible solutions.