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I have a question purely to satisfy my own curiosity that I'd like to ask on Maths Exchange. I'm not an expert in the field of my question - I just love maths in general and love reading about it.

My question will be about whether a particular problem is NP-Hard or NP-Complete and will be asking for answers that can explain the answer in layman's terms. Since I'm not an expert in the field I'll probably have to judge the correct answer based on votes from the community.

Would this question be considered on-topic?

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To answer the broader question: yes, questions posed by non-mathematicians are certainly allowed here. You may be confusing the situation with MathOverflow, where the standard of allowable questions is substantially more strict. (Since MathOverflow pre-dates math.SE, without "non-mathematician" questions this site would likely not exist.)

From our Help Center:

Mathematics Stack Exchange is for people studying mathematics at any level and professionals in related fields. We welcome questions about:

  • Understanding mathematical concepts and theorems
  • Hints on mathematical problems
  • History and development of mathematics
  • Solving mathematical puzzles
  • Software that mathematicians use

To approach the more specific issue: while your question might be a better fit for cs.SE (but possibly not cstheory.SE), I personally feel that questions in theoretical computer science (with a mathematical bent) are still on-topic here. For me, this at least includes the theories of , , and .

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