Hacker News Reader

I think the title is appropriate. The approximate solution is the interesting one, as the exact solution is believed to be intractable.

View on HN

This is absolutely not true. The wikipedia page for the max flow problem lists several (slower) poly-time algorithms for solving exact max flow. Most theory-101 classes cover at least Ford-Fulkerson.

I don't think that's true. See, for example, Finding Maximum Flows in Undirected Graphs Seems Easier than Bipartite Matching (Karger-Levine, 1997): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.52.3...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com