# Tag Info

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D.W. explains what to ask. Here are some pointer towards how. Wait, first the when: First, talk to people, namely fellow students, TAs and teachers (in that order). Many problems go away after you talk to somebody who is thinking about the same problem, or has done so before. If that is no option (really?) or does not work out: Google your problem. ...

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Titles Titles are important: they represent the question on the main site, in search results and in RSS feeds. We want users to visit questions (and to answer them) and a good title may make just the difference. Also, titles fuel the search for related questions in the "Ask Question" form. A question titled "How to analyse this piece of code?" will never ...

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I give a general introduction on what I consider good editing practice here. With respect to LaTeX, specifically, I have some thoughts. In titles: the less, the better. Not only do LaTeX-heavy titles slow down loading of question lists, they are -- when more complex -- also all but impossible to decipher in RSS feed readers and in the mobile SE app. A ...

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Why have I been sent here? Formal Languages What is the difference between an algorithm, a language and a problem? Are there other ways to describe formal languages other than grammars? How to show that L = L(G)? How to prove that a language is not regular? How to prove a language is regular? What's wrong with my pumping lemma proof? (You must show ...

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Tagging Tagging is an important feature of Stack Exchange for several reasons. Tags help searching. Tags are used to select "Related" questions for the site bar. Tags help disambiguate titles in question lists. Tags allow users to filter what they see. The last point is probably the most relevant: experts of an area may not even see a question just ...

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Why have I been sent here? Complexity Theory What is the difference between an algorithm, a language and a problem? How can we assume that basic operations on numbers take constant time? What is the definition of $P$, $NP$, $NP$-complete and $NP$-hard? Optimization version of decision problems Decision problems vs "real" problems that aren't ...

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Project topics, course selection, etc. For users with enough reputation (20+) to use chat Welcome to [cs.se]! Unfortunately, your question is not a good fit for the Stack Exchange format. We prefer questions that have objectively correct answers that will be useful both to the asker and others who have the same question in the future. What is or is not a ...

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Formatting Markdown Use the basic formatting provided by Markdown to structure posts: lists should be Markdown lists (nesting works!), links should use the [text](URL) syntax, emphasis should be placed by *...*, citations put in > ... paragraphs and source code in code blocks (prepend lines with four spaces). There is extensive documentation of what is ...

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Why have I been sent here? Computability What is the difference between an algorithm, a language and a problem? Why nondeterminism? Are there minimum criteria for a programming language being Turing complete? How to show that a function is not computable? What are common techniques for reducing problems to each other? Differences and relationships between ...

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Why have I been sent here? Asymptotics What does the "big O complexity" of a function mean? How does one know which notation of time complexity analysis to use? Sorting functions by asymptotic growth (Also: Algorithmic intuition for logarithmic complexity) Solving or approximating recurrence relations for sequences of numbers How do O and Ω ...

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Crossposts Add the name of the other site inside the brackets and a link to the other copy of the question inside the parentheses: [Also posted on ](). Please [do not post the same question on multiple sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/64068). Each community should have an honest shot at answering without anybody's time being wasted. If you don't get ...

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Why have I been sent here? Algorithms What is the difference between an algorithm, a language and a problem? Is there a system behind the magic of algorithm analysis? How to come up with the runtime of algorithms? Explaining the relevance of asymptotic complexity of algorithms to practice of designing algorithms Justification for neglecting constants in ...

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References Rule of thumb: Provide references so that the work is uniquely identified and easily accessible for readers (in case of online resources). Academic resources References to books or papers should consist of more than a link or a book name. Not only do links break eventually, they also require a click; the reference should be clear as is. This ...

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Gutter Anything along the lines of "Hi everybody", "I'm only a beginner but I'm really, really hard-working" or "Thanks in advance, cheers" should be done away with immediately. While we can appreciate nice tone, questions and answers are not supposed to be (part of) a conversation. Other elements that can be removed are things like "EDIT:" We keep a ...

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Language Language often is a matter of taste and many of us are non-natives. Therefore, we are bound to find "strange" language more often than not, but that is no reason to edit everything. On the other hand, posts need to be comprehensible. Sometimes, bad translations, inventive grammar and peculiar terms stand in the way of understanding a post. Edit ...

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Problem Dump Applies to questions that consist (next to) only a problem statement (and maybe a plea for help). Recommended action is to post below comment (or similar) and vote to close as "Unclear what you are asking". Hello! We discourage posts that simply state a problem out of context, and expect the community to solve it. Assuming you tried to solve ...

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Operating Systems We need some filler text until we have more questions or SE will automatically delete the answer.

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Why have I been sent here? Mathematics How do I write a proof using induction on the length of the input string? Provides a general introduction to induction. Solving or approximating recurrence relations for sequences of numbers

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Why have I been sent here? Architecture How does a computer work? How does the computer determine whether a number is smaller or greater than another? Tag, index and offset of associative cache

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We have MathJax Welcome to [cs.SE]! Note that you can use LaTeX here to typeset mathematics in a more readable way. See [here](https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271/add-short-reference-for-latex-commands) for a short introduction. Welcome to Computer Science! Note that you can use LaTeX here to typeset mathematics in a more readable way. See ...

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Broad Reference Request Reference requests that ask for a specific reference for some result are completely fine. Those that ask for "any work on X" or "best papers of area Y" are (almost) always too broad for Stack Exchange. Close accordingly and comment like this: A reference request like yours is too broad for Stack Exchange -- you ask for a survey of a ...

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Mathematics Questions We entertain mathematics questions if and only if there is a direct relation to computer science. In the best case this connection is layed out in the question. Other usually accepted cases are such where there is a common agreement that a particular field is of central relevance in CS (and probably more so than in mathematics) or the ...

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Plagiarism Plagiarism is not cool. [Plagiarism](https://cs.stackexchange.com/help/referencing) is [not cool](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/83955/plagiarism-should-be-addressed-specifically-in-the-faq/134715#134715). In addition to posting this comment, please Edit the post to mark cited content as such (with the “ / Ctrl+Q / leading < ...

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Reference material may help Welcome to [cs.SE]! Your question is a very basic one. Let me direct you towards our reference questions which cover some fundamentals you seem to be missing in detail. Please work through the related questions listed there, try to solve your problem again and edit to include your attempts along with the specific problems you ...

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Question is mainly an image Don't use images as main content of your post. This makes your question impossible to search and inaccessible to the visually impaired; [we don't like that](https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/752/should-we-do-anything-about-questions-that-are-just-a-scan-of-a-problem-in-their). Please transcribe text and mathematics. You ...

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There are some useful guidelines that can help you decide whether a question should be closed. Anything that is clearly offtopic or incomprehensible should be closed immediately. Bad-subjective questions have no place on any SE site. Refer users to Chat for discussion. Many (bad) basic questions can be closed as duplicate of one of our reference questions (...

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You may use this online graphical tool to create Latex formulas: http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

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Bad title The title you have chosen is not well suited to representing your question. Please take some time to improve it; we have collected some advice [here](https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/a/815/). Thank you! The title you have chosen is not well suited to representing your question. Please take some time to improve it; we have collected some advice ...

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A word of warning If what you are working on has been assigned to you for homework, asking about it on the internet may defeat the purpose of the exercise. If your teachers know what they are doing¹, assigned exercises will encourage you to review the requisite material, work with the definitions and theorems², connect different concepts, (occasionally) ...

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