this is an example problem from an old midterm:
Let G = (V, E) be a connected undirected graph where the edges have positive integer edge weights associated with them, and a vertex s ∈ V is the source. Provide an algorithm that for each vertex t ∈ V reports the minimum last edge weight on a non-decreasing path from s to t (∞ if there is no such path). A path v1, v2, . . . vr is non-decreasing if w(v_i, v_i+1) ≤ w(v_i+1, v_i+2) for i = 1, 2, ...r−2.
Am I correct in thinking that the problem wants me to come up with an algorithm that given a graph with a starting vertex, can find the length of the shortest path, that also has edge weights increasing as you go down the path, to every other vertex it can reach?
The question asks to write an algorithm that provides a path from the source vertex s to a (can be any) vertex t where the weights of the path between s and t increase (or stay the same). It then asks to get the minimum weight of the last edge of all these possible paths.
In other words, you need to see which path from s to t (which should be non-decreasing in weights) gives the lowest weight in the last edge.
Related
Given a undirected graph that it has ordinary edges and specific edges, our goal is to find the sum of the shortest path's weight between two vertices(start vertex to end vertex) with only walk through specific edge equal or less than one time. In other words, there are multiple specific edges, and only at most one of them can be used.
This is a problem that I faced in my Data-Structure homework, and I stuck at the first step of the way to storage the weights of the edge in Graph. Because there are two kinds of edge in Graph, I have no idea that how to solve this problem.
I know that I can obtain the shortest path by using Dijkstra’s Algorithm, but during the process, how can I modify the Algorithm to meet the requirement of the restriction?
Thanks a lot for answering my question!
The solution is to duplicate the graph as follows:
Duplicate the vertices, such that for each original vertex A, you have an A and an A'.
If in the original graph there is a normal edge between A and B, then in the new graph, place an edge between A and B and also between A' and B'
If in the original graph there is a specific edge between A and B, then in the new graph place a (directed) edge from A to B' (not the inverse!) and from B to A' (again: not the inverse!). These edges should be directed.
If now the task was to find the shortest path between S and D, then solve in the new graph the problem of finding the shortest path between S and D or S and D', which ever is shortest. You can use a standard implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm for that, starting in S and ending when you find either D or D'.
Given n specific edges run Dijkstra's search n times.
On each run, one of the n nodes (let call it node i) should be set to its real weight and all other n-1 nodes to an infinite value.
At the end of each run store the shortest path and step i
At the end of all runs select from the stored paths the shortest one.
set all n edges weight to infinity
for i=0; i < n ; i++ {
set edge i to it real weight
run run Dijkstra's search
store path
set all n edges weight to infinity
}
select the shortest path from the stored paths.
I have a question which I was asked in some past exams at my school and I can't find an answer to it.
Is it possible knowing the final matrix after running the Johnson Algorithm on a graph, to know if it previously had negative cycles or not? Why?
Johnson Algorithm
Johnson's Algorithm is a technique that is able to compute shortest paths on graphs. Which is able to handle negative weights on edges, as long as there does not exist a cycle with negative weight.
The algorithm consists of (from Wikipedia):
First, a new node q is added to the graph, connected by zero-weight edges to each of the other nodes.
Second, the Bellman–Ford algorithm is used, starting from the new vertex q, to find for each vertex v the minimum weight h(v) of a path from q to v. If this step detects a negative cycle, the algorithm is terminated.
Next the edges of the original graph are reweighted using the values computed by the Bellman–Ford algorithm: an edge from u to v, having length w(u, v), is given the new length w(u,v) + h(u) − h(v).
Finally, q is removed, and Dijkstra's algorithm is used to find the shortest paths from each node s to every other vertex in the reweighted graph.
If I understood your question correctly, which should have been as follows:
Is it possible knowing the final pair-wise distances matrix after running the Johnson Algorithm on a graph, to know if it originally had any negative-weight edges or not? Why?
As others commented here, we must first assume the graph has no negative weight cycles, since otherwise the Johnson algorithm halts and returns False (due to the internal Bellman-Form detection of negative weight cycles).
The answer then is that if any negative weight edge e = (u, v) exists in the graph, then the shortest weighted distance between u --> v cannot be > 0 (since at the worst case you can travel the negative edge e between those vertices).
Therefore, at least one of the edges had negative weight in the original graph iff any value in the final pair-wise distances is < 0
If the question is supposed to be interpreted as:
Is it possible, knowing the updated non-negative edge weights after running the Johnson Algorithm on a graph, to know if it originally had any negative-weight edges or not? Why?
Then no, you can't tell.
Running the Johnson algorithm on a graph that has only non-negative edge weights will leave the weights unchanged. This is because all of the shortest distances q -> v will be 0. Therefore, given the edge weights after running Johnson, the initial weights could have been exactly the same.
The following is the question I am working on:
Consider a directed, weighted graph
G
where all edge weights are
positive. The goal of this problem is to find the shortest path
in
G
between two pre-specified vertices
s
and
t
, but with an added twist: you are allowed to change the weight
of
exactly
one edge (of your
choosing) to zero.
In other words, you must pick an edge in
G
to set to zero that minimizes the shortest
path between
s
and
t
.
Give an efficient algorithm to achieve this goal in
O
(
E
lg
V
) time and analyze your algorithm’s running
time. Sub-optimal solutions will receive less credit.
Hint:
You may have to reverse the edges, run a
familiar algorithm a number of times, plus do some extra work
So I have tried running Dijkstra's from s to all other nodes and then I have tried reversing the edges and running it again from s to all other nodes. However, I found out that we have to run Dijskstra's from s to all other nodes and then reverse the edges and then run Dijkstra's from all other nodes to t. I am not exactly sure how this helps us to find the edge to set to zero. By my intuition I thought that we would simply set the maximum weight edge to zero. What is the point of reversing the edges?
We need to run Dijkstra's algorithm twice - once for the original graph with s as the source vertex, and once with the reversed graph and t as the source vertex. We'll denote the distance we get between vertex s and i from the first run as D(i) and the distance we get between vertex t and i second run D_rev(i).
Note that we can go follow the reversed edges backwards (i.e., follow them in the original direction), thus D_rev(i) is actually the shortest distance from vertex i to t. Similarly, D(i) is the shortest distance from vertex s to i following Dijkstra's algorithm.
We can now loop through all the edges, and for each edge e which connects v1 and v2, add up D(v1) and D_rev(v2), which corresponds to the weight of the path s -> v1 -> v2 -> t with e being the zero edge, since we can go from s to v1 with a distance of D(v1), set e to 0, go from v1 to v2, and then go from v2 to t with a distance of D_rev(v2). The minimum over these is the answer.
A rough proof sketch (and also a restatement) : if we set an edge e to 0, but don't use it in the path, we can be better off setting an edge that's in the path to 0. Thus, we need only consider paths that includes the zeroed edge. The shortest path through a zeroed edge e is to first take the shortest path from s to v1, and then take the shortest path from v2 to t, which are exactly what were computed using the Dijkstra algorithm, i.e., D and D_rev.
Hope this answer helps!
I have directed Graph G(V,E) with weight function w. so that weight of each (u,v) is a positive value. I need to find the most lightweight circle in the graph that vertex k' is part of it.
I've also given an algorithm i can use which can find the most lightweight path for a graph with positives weights ( i can use it only once).
I thought about creating a sub graph G' where all vertices and edges that are strongly connected components. find the graph which k' is part of it. then find for the most lightweight adjacent edge from k' to some v of vertices. from that v i can run the algorithm given and find the lightweight path then add the weight of the vertex missing ( (k',v) ).
is that seems correct ? I'm in the beginning of this course and I feel i'm not there yet.
It is a single-source shortest-path problem, where you exclude k->k self-loop as a solution, and find a longer path from k to k. The trick is always expand the shortest path thread.
Given this definition, you can start Googling...
I can't imagine why you called your source vertex k'. Anyway...
Add a new vetrex w that has the same outgoing edges as k'.
Then use Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path from w to k'.
Substitute k' for w in the path, and you have the smallest cycle including k'.
Very interesting problem. I am assuming that there are no negative values in the graph, or otherwise the following solutions requires first normalizing the vertices such that the negative values become at least 0. First method (trivial) is to detect all cycles starting from the target vertex (k). Then compute the weight of all those cycles and take the minimum. The second method is to run Dijkstra algorithm (again watch out negative weights) from the target node (k). Then iterate over all incoming edges of (k), and select the source node that has the minimum Dijkstra value. Now the lightest cycle includes the single path (formed by Dijkstra traversal) from (k) to the chosen node + the bridge to come back to (k). I hope that helps :)
I've been studying all-pair shortest path algorithms recently such as Floyd-Warshall and Johnson's algorithm, and I've noticed that these algorithms produce correct solutions even when a graph contains negative weight edges (but not negative weight cycles). For comparison, Dijkstra's algorithm (which is single-source shortest path) does not work for negative weight edges. What makes the all-pair shortest path algorithms work with negative weights?
Floyd Warshall's all pairs shortest paths algorithm works for graphs with negative edge weights because the correctness of the algorithm does not depend on edge's weight being non-negative, while the correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm is based on this fact.
Correctness of Dijkstra's algorithm:
We have 2 sets of vertices at any step of the algorithm. Set A consists of the vertices to which we have computed the shortest paths. Set B consists of the remaining vertices.
Inductive Hypothesis: At each step we will assume that all previous iterations are correct.
Inductive Step: When we add a vertex V to the set A and set the distance to be dist[V], we must prove that this distance is optimal. If this is not optimal then there must be some other path to the vertex V that is of shorter length.
Suppose this some other path goes through some vertex X in the set B.
Now, since dist[V] <= dist[X] , therefore any other path to V will be atleast dist[V] length, unless the graph has negative edge lengths.
Correctness of Floyd Warshall's algorithm:
Any path from vertex S to vertex T, will go through any other vertex U of the graph. Thus the shortest path from S to T can be computed as the
min( shortest_path(S to U) + shortest_path(U to T)) for all vertices U in the graph.
As you can see there is no dependence on the graph's edges to be non-negative as long as the sub calls compute the paths correctly. And the sub calls compute the paths correctly as long as the base cases have been properly initialized.
Dijkstra's Algorithm doesn't work for negative weight edge because it is based on the greedy strategy(an assumption) that once a vertex v was added to the set S, d[v] contains the minimum distance possible.
But if the last vertex in Q was added to S and it has some outgoing negative weight edges. The effects on the distance that caused by negative edges won't count.
However, all pairs shortest paths algorithm will capture those updates.