Can someone provide an introductory example of a certificate in complexity theory?
Suppose you are the verifier for SUBSET-SUM: "given a set $S$ of integers, is there a subset of $S$ whose elements sum up to exactly zero?" To show the problem is in NP, you must be able to efficiently verify that a solution I give you is correct. As the verifier, you only care about verifying solutions (not "finding solutions"!). You do not care where that solution might come from or who constructs it. Now, when you are given a subset, you can easily sum up the elements and announce whether or not those elements sum up to 0.

The example you mention is a problem that is also in P (clearly, we can solve it in polynomial time). Every problem in P is also in NP. We don't have to care about the certificate, but instead we can simply solve the problem in polynomial time. (Check the definition of NP if this feels confusing, but hopefully it doesn't).

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