Smoothed analysis combines elements over worst-case and average case analysis. For an instance x, the smoothed complexity is the average complexity of an instance obtained from x by a perturbation. The smoothed complexity of a problem is the worst smoothed complexity of any instance. Spielman and Teng
introduced this notion for continuous problems. We apply the concept to combinatorial problems and study the smoothed complexity
of three classical discrete problems: quicksort, left-to-right maxima counting, and shortest paths.
This work was partially supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies programme of the EU under contract number IST-1999-14186
(ALCOM-FT).