Suppose G is an undirected graph with n vertices, there are weighted edges between each pair of vertices. Can you construct a tree in following structure:
v_1-v_2-v_3-...-v_n such that each node in the tree corresponding to a vertex in G and each node only has one child except the leaf. Also the total weight of the tree edges is minimized.
If use an algorithm similar to Kruskal’s Algorithm: sort all weights of edges in the original graph in ascending order. Starts from the minimal weight edge, if add this edge does not violate the tree structure described above, then add this one in the final tree, otherwise, move on to the next.
Can this algorithm give the tree with minimal weights? If not, is it possible to find an algorithm to get this tree?
It can, but it may not. Consider a 4-node graph with edge weights as follows:
AB: 3
AC: 1
AD: 100
BC: 2
BD: 100
CD: 2
The minimal tree is ABCD with length 7, but your algorithm will always start with the (length 1) edge AC which is not part of the minimal tree required.
Related
I got this question from a data structure and algorithm textbook saying
A simple undirected graph is complete if it contains an edge between every pair of distinct vertices. A star graph is a tree of n nodes with one node having vertex degree n-1 and the other n-1 having vertex degree 1.
(a) Draw a complete undirected graph with 6 vertices.
(b) Show that applying breath-first algorithm on the undirected graph in (a) will produce a star graph.
I know how the BFS works using queues and I can provide a result of the traversal. What I'm confused about is on part (b) how can I show that applying BFS on an undirected graph will produce a star graph?
In a, there is n * (n - 1) / 2 edges in total.
It means that for every two nodes, there is an edge between them.
if applying BFS on (a) using a queue, Steps as follow:
1.) you pick up a random node, which is the root of the graph.
2.) you travel from the root node, and put all the nodes having edges with it to the queue. In addition, you have a boolean array to mark who is already processed.
in 2.), all the nodes except the root will be put into the queue.
At last, the root node have N - 1 edges, others have only one edge, and this edge is with the root
I currently studying about graphs and their algorithms, and i noticed a question which i don't know to to exactly prove:
If we have a connected, undirected graph G=(V,E), and every edge is with weight=1,is it true to say that every spanning tree that built from the shortest paths from the root, is a minimum spanning tree?
I ran some examples in http://visualgo.net/sssp.html and is seems for me that the answer for this question is true, but someone can show me how can i prove this?
and another question that crossed my mind, does the other direction is also true?
Every tree has exactly n - 1 edges. Since all weights are equal to 1, every spanning tree of G has a total weight of n - 1. It is also true for the minimal spanning tree. So the answer is yes.
TLDR: Not Necessarily
Consider the triangle graph with unit weights - it has three vertices x,y,z, and all three edges {x,y},{x,z},{y,z} have unit weight. The shortest path between any two vertices is the direct path. Agree?However, to satisfy the condition of a MST in the graph, you have to put together a set of 2 edges connecting the 3 vertices. Say {x,y}, {y,z} for example. This does not represent the shortest path between any pair of vertices.
Hence, your proposition is false :)
What is the maximum and minimum number of edges to be considered in krushkal's algorithm with an example for both cases.
What I thought was since the Krushkal's algorithm is for finding minimum spanning tree the maximum number of edges is (V-1) where V is the number of vertices. Adding one more edge would result in a cycle in the graph. How can we obtain at a minimum value ?
Kruskal's algorithm stops when you've added V - 1 edges to your MST, so this is the minimum that have to be considered. This happens when the lowest value V - 1 edges of your graph do not form a cycle, and they will be added one after the other by the algorithm, after which it will stop.
For example, consider a complete graph with edges with cost 1, which is minimum in the graph, between node 1 and every other node. Make all the other edges have cost 2.
The worst case is when you must inspect every edge (of which there are O(V^2)) until you finally select V - 1. This means that you have to force a lot of cycles to be created before the last edge is added.
Consider a complete graph again. Have the V - 2 edges between node 1 and V - 2 nodes have cost 1, which is minimum in the graph. These will be selected first. Now let node k be the one that is not part of a selected edge, so that is left out of the graph. Have the edge between node k and node 1 have the largest cost. This will cause it to be inspected and added to the MST last, forcing the algorithm to inspect all O(V^2) edges before building the MST.
Remember the Kruskal's algorithm processes edges in increasing order of their cost, rejecting edges that would form a cycle if added to the MST we are building.
A tree of N vertices always has N-1 edges. Consequently you have to consider at least N-1 edges during Kruskal's algorithm. An example may be a graph which is a tree.
Does the opposite of Kruskal's algorithm for minimum spanning tree work for it? I mean, choosing the max weight (edge) every step?
Any other idea to find maximum spanning tree?
Yes, it does.
One method for computing the maximum weight spanning tree of a network G –
due to Kruskal – can be summarized as follows.
Sort the edges of G into decreasing order by weight. Let T be the set of edges comprising the maximum weight spanning tree. Set T = ∅.
Add the first edge to T.
Add the next edge to T if and only if it does not form a cycle in T. If
there are no remaining edges exit and report G to be disconnected.
If T has n−1 edges (where n is the number of vertices in G) stop and
output T . Otherwise go to step 3.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20141114045919/http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~konis/Rcourse/exercise1.pdf.
From Maximum Spanning Tree at Wolfram MathWorld:
"A maximum spanning tree is a spanning tree of a weighted graph having maximum weight. It can be computed by negating the weights for each edge and applying Kruskal's algorithm (Pemmaraju and Skiena, 2003, p. 336)."
If you invert the weight on every edge and minimize, do you get the maximum spanning tree? If that works you can use the same algorithm. Zero weights will be a problem, of course.
Although this thread is too old, I have another approach for finding the maximum spanning tree (MST) in a graph G=(V,E)
We can apply some sort Prim's algorithm for finding the MST. For that I have to define Cut Property for the maximum weighted edge.
Cut property: Let say at any point we have a set S which contains the vertices that are in MST( for now assume it is calculated somehow ). Now consider the set S/V ( vertices not in MST ):
Claim: The edge from S to S/V which has the maximum weight will always be in every MST.
Proof: Let's say that at a point when we are adding the vertices to our set S the maximum weighted edge from S to S/V is e=(u,v) where u is in S and v is in S/V. Now consider an MST which does not contain e. Add the edge e to the MST. It will create a cycle in the original MST. Traverse the cycle and find the vertices u' in S and v' in S/V such that u' is the last vertex in S after which we enter S/V and v' is the first vertex in S/V on the path in cycle from u to v.
Remove the edge e'=(u',v') and the resultant graph is still connected but the weight of e is greater than e' [ as e is the maximum weighted edge from S to S/V at this point] so this results in an MST which has sum of weights greater than original MST. So this is a contradiction. This means that edge e must be in every MST.
Algorithm to find MST:
Start from S={s} //s is the start vertex
while S does not contain all vertices
do
{
for each vertex s in S
add a vertex v from S/V such that weight of edge e=(s,v) is maximum
}
end while
Implementation:
we can implement using Max Heap/Priority Queue where the key is the maximum weight of the edge from a vertex in S to a vertex in S/V and value is the vertex itself. Adding a vertex in S is equal to Extract_Max from the Heap and at every Extract_Max change the key of the vertices adjacent to the vertex just added.
So it takes m Change_Key operations and n Extract_Max operations.
Extract_Min and Change_Key both can be implemented in O(log n). n is the number of vertices.
So This takes O(m log n) time. m is the number of edges in the graph.
Let me provide an improvement algorithm:
first construct an arbitrary tree (using BFS or DFS)
then pick an edge outside the tree, add to the tree, it will form a cycle, drop the smallest weight edge in the cycle.
continue doing this util all the rest edges are considered
Thus, we'll get the maximum spanning tree.
This tree satisfies any edge outside the tree, if added will form a cycle and the edge outside <= any edge weights in the cycle
In fact, this is a necessary and sufficient condition for a spanning tree to be maximum spanning tree.
Pf.
Necessary: It's obvious that this is necessary, or we could swap edge to make a tree with a larger sum of edge weights.
Sufficient: Suppose tree T1 satisfies this condition, and T2 is the maximum spanning tree.
Then for the edges T1 ∪ T2, there're T1-only edges, T2-only edges, T1 ∩ T2 edges, if we add a T1-only edge(x1, xk) to T2, we know it will form a cycle, and we claim, in this cycle there must exist one T2-only edge that has the same edge weights as (x1, xk). Then we can exchange these edges will produce a tree with one more edge in common with T2 and has the same sum of edge weights, repeating doing this we'll get T2. so T1 is also a maximum spanning tree.
Prove the claim:
suppose it's not true, in the cycle we must have a T2-only edge since T1 is a tree. If none of the T2-only edges has a value equal to that of (x1, xk), then each of T2-only edges makes a loop with tree T1, then T1 has a loop leads to a contradiction.
This algorithm taken from UTD professor R. Chandrasekaran's notes. You can refer here: Single Commodity Multi-terminal Flows
Negate the weight of original graph and compute minimum spanning tree on the negated graph will give the right answer. Here is why: For the same spanning tree in both graphs, the weighted sum of one graph is the negation of the other. So the minimum spanning tree of the negated graph should give the maximum spanning tree of the original one.
Only reversing the sorting order, and choosing a heavy edge in a vertex cut does not guarantee a Maximum Spanning Forest (Kruskal's algorithm generates forest, not tree). In case all edges have negative weights, the Max Spanning Forest obtained from reverse of kruskal, would still be a negative weight path. However the ideal answer is a forest of disconnected vertices. i.e. a forest of |V| singleton trees, or |V| components having total weight of 0 (not the least negative).
Change the weight in a reserved order(You can achieve this by taking a negative weight value and add a large number, whose purpose is to ensure non-negative) Then run your family geedy-based algorithm on the minimum spanning tree.
I have an unweighted, connected graph. I want to find a connected subgraph that definitely includes a certain set of nodes, and as few extras as possible. How could this be accomplished?
Just in case, I'll restate the question using more precise language. Let G(V,E) be an unweighted, undirected, connected graph. Let N be some subset of V. What's the best way to find the smallest connected subgraph G'(V',E') of G(V,E) such that N is a subset of V'?
Approximations are fine.
This is exactly the well-known NP-hard Steiner Tree problem. Without more details on what your instances look like, it's hard to give advice on an appropriate algorithm.
I can't think of an efficient algorithm to find the optimal solution, but assuming that your input graph is dense, the following might work well enough:
Convert your input graph G(V, E) to a weighted graph G'(N, D), where N is the subset of vertices you want to cover and D is distances (path lengths) between corresponding vertices in the original graph. This will "collapse" all vertices you don't need into edges.
Compute the minimum spanning tree for G'.
"Expand" the minimum spanning tree by the following procedure: for every edge d in the minimum spanning tree, take the corresponding path in graph G and add all vertices (including endpoints) on the path to the result set V' and all edges in the path to the result set E'.
This algorithm is easy to trip up to give suboptimal solutions. Example case: equilateral triangle where there are vertices at the corners, in midpoints of sides and in the middle of the triangle, and edges along the sides and from the corners to the middle of the triangle. To cover the corners it's enough to pick the single middle point of the triangle, but this algorithm might choose the sides. Nonetheless, if the graph is dense, it should work OK.
The easiest solutions will be the following:
a) based on mst:
- initially, all nodes of V are in V'
- build a minimum spanning tree of the graph G(V,E) - call it T.
- loop: for every leaf v in T that is not in N, delete v from V'.
- repeat loop until all leaves in T are in N.
b) another solution is the following - based on shortest paths tree.
- pick any node in N, call it v, let v be a root of a tree T = {v}.
- remove v from N.
loop:
1) select the shortest path from any node in T and any node in N. the shortest path p: {v, ... , u} where v is in T and u is in N.
2) every node in p is added to V'.
3) every node in p and in N is deleted from N.
--- repeat loop until N is empty.
At the beginning of the algorithm: compute all shortest paths in G using any known efficient algorithm.
Personally, I used this algorithm in one of my papers, but it is more suitable for distributed enviroments.
Let N be the set of nodes that we need to interconnect. We want to build a minimum connected dominating set of the graph G, and we want to give priority for nodes in N.
We give each node u a unique identifier id(u). We let w(u) = 0 if u is in N, otherwise w(1).
We create pair (w(u), id(u)) for each node u.
each node u builds a multiset relay node. That is, a set M(u) of 1-hop neigbhors such that each 2-hop neighbor is a neighbor to at least one node in M(u). [the minimum M(u), the better is the solution].
u is in V' if and only if:
u has the smallest pair (w(u), id(u)) among all its neighbors.
or u is selected in the M(v), where v is a 1-hop neighbor of u with the smallest (w(u),id(u)).
-- the trick when you execute this algorithm in a centralized manner is to be efficient in computing 2-hop neighbors. The best I could get from O(n^3) is to O(n^2.37) by matrix multiplication.
-- I really wish to know what is the approximation ration of this last solution.
I like this reference for heuristics of steiner tree:
The Steiner tree problem, Hwang Frank ; Richards Dana 1955- Winter Pawel 1952
You could try to do the following:
Creating a minimal vertex-cover for the desired nodes N.
Collapse these, possibly unconnected, sub-graphs into "large" nodes. That is, for each sub-graph, remove it from the graph, and replace it with a new node. Call this set of nodes N'.
Do a minimal vertex-cover of the nodes in N'.
"Unpack" the nodes in N'.
Not sure whether or not it gives you an approximation within some specific bound or so. You could perhaps even trick the algorithm to make some really stupid decisions.
As already pointed out, this is the Steiner tree problem in graphs. However, an important detail is that all edges should have weight 1. Because |V'| = |E'| + 1 for any Steiner tree (V',E'), this achieves exactly what you want.
For solving it, I would suggest the following Steiner tree solver (to be transparent: I am one of the developers):
https://scipjack.zib.de/
For graphs with a few thousand edges, you will usually get an optimal solution in less than 0.1 seconds.