Finding the subgraph with maximum average degree. Complexity? - algorithm

Is there an efficient algorithm to find the subgraph with the largest average degree (which may be the graph itself)?

The paper "Finding a Maximum-Density Subgraph" by Andrew Goldberg gives a polynomial-time algorithm for identifying such a graph. It looks like the algorithm makes logarithmically many calls to a max-flow algorithm on appropriately constructed graphs. From what I've read, it looks like the algorithm is just a binary search over the average degree where each guess is checked using a maximum flow on a standard graph construction. Most of the complexity appears to be in arguing why the construction is correct.
Hope this helps!

Related

Partitioning a graph into two clusters

I have a complete weighted graph G(V, E). I want to partition V into two clusters such that maximum intra-cluster edge length gets minimized. What is the fastest algorithm that solves this problem? I believe this can be solved in O(n^2) time where |V|=n. One approach would be making the graph bipartite. I could not figure out the complete algorithm. Can anyone help me to figure out the complete algorithm?
Two-color (depth-first search, O(n) time) a maximum spanning forest (Prim's algorithm, O(n2) time). Proof of correctness left as an exercise.
For the record, for sparser graphs with only m edges, I'm pretty sure there's an O(m)-time algorithm.

A deterministic algorithm for minimum cut of undirected graph?

Could someone name a few deterministic algorithm for minimum cut of undirected graph, along with their complexity please?
(By the way I learnt that there is a undirected version of Ford-Fulkerson algorithm by adding a opposing parallel edge for each directed edge, could someone tell me what is the time complexity of this one and maybe give me a bit more reference to read?)
Thanks.
Solving the global minimum cut by computing multiple maximum flows is possible but suboptimal. Using the fastest known algorithm (Orlin for sparse graphs and King-Rao-Tarjan for dense graphs), maxflow can be solved in O(mn). By picking a fixed source vertex and computing maxflow to all other vertices, we get (by the duality) the global mincut in O(mn²).
There exist several algorithms specifically for global mincuts. For algorithms independent of graph structure, the most commonly used are
Nagamochi & Ibaraki, 1992, O(nm + n²log(n)). Does not use flows and gradually shrinks the graph.
Stoer & Wagner, 1997, also O(nm + n²log(n)). Easier to implement. It is implemented in BGL
Hao & Orlin's algorithm can also run very fast in practice, especially when some of the known heuristics are applied.
There are many algorithms that exploit structural properties of input graphs. I'd suggest the recent algorithm of Brinkmeier, 2007 which runs in "O(n² max(log(n), min(m/n,δ/ε))), where ε is the minimal edge weight, and δ is the minimal weighted degree". In particular, when we ignore the weights, we get O(n² log(n)) for inputs with m in o(n log(n)) and O(nm) for denser graphs, meaning its time complexity is never worse than that of N-I or S-W regardless of input.

Efficient minimal spanning tree in metric space

I have a large set of points (n > 10000 in number) in some metric space (e.g. equipped with Jaccard Distance). I want to connect them with a minimal spanning tree, using the metric as the weight on the edges.
Is there an algorithm that runs in less than O(n2) time?
If not, is there an algorithm that runs in less than O(n2) average time (possibly using randomization)?
If not, is there an algorithm that runs in less than O(n2) time and gives a good approximation of the minimum spanning tree?
If not, is there a reason why such algorithm can't exist?
Thank you in advance!
Edit for the posters below:
Classical algorithms for finding minimal spanning tree don't work here. They have an E factor in their running time, but in my case E = n2 since I actually consider the complete graph. I also don't have enough memory to store all the >49995000 possible edges.
Apparently, according to this: Estimating the weight of metric minimum spanning trees in sublinear time there is no deterministic o(n^2) (note: smallOh, which is probably what you meant by less than O(n^2), I suppose) algorithm. That paper also gives a sub-linear randomized algorithm for the metric minimum weight spanning tree.
Also look at this paper: An optimal minimum spanning tree algorithm which gives an optimal algorithm. The paper also claims that the complexity of the optimal algorithm is not yet known!
The references in the first paper should be helpful and that paper is probably the most relevant to your question.
Hope that helps.
When I was looking at a very similar problem 3-4 years ago, I could not find an ideal solution in the literature I looked at.
The trick I think is to find a "small" subset of "likely good" edges, which you can then run plain old Kruskal on. In general, it's likely that many MST edges can be found among the set of edges that join each vertex to its k nearest neighbours, for some small k. These edges might not span the graph, but when they don't, each component can be collapsed to a single vertex (chosen randomly) and the process repeated. (For better accuracy, instead of picking a single representative to become the new "supervertex", pick some small number r of representatives and in the next round examine all r^2 distances between 2 supervertices, choosing the minimum.)
k-nearest-neighbour algorithms are quite well-studied for the case where objects can be represented as vectors in a finite-dimensional Euclidean space, so if you can find a way to map your objects down to that (e.g. with multidimensional scaling) then you may have luck there. In particular, mapping down to 2D allows you to compute a Voronoi diagram, and MST edges will always be between adjacent faces. But from what little I've read, this approach doesn't always produce good-quality results.
Otherwise, you may find clustering approaches useful: Clustering large datasets in arbitrary metric spaces is one of the few papers I found that explicitly deals with objects that are not necessarily finite-dimensional vectors in a Euclidean space, and which gives consideration to the possibility of computationally expensive distance functions.

Vertex tour in a weighted undirected graph with the maximum cost?

What are the efficient algorithms for finding a vertex tour in a weighted undirected graph with maximum cost if we need to start from a particular vertex?
It's NPC because if you set weights as 1 for all edges, if HC exists it will be your answer, and so In all you can find HC existence from a single source which is NPC by solving this problem so your problem is NPC, but there are some polynomial approximation algorithms.
Since the problem is NP-hard, you are very unlikely to find an efficient algorithm that solves the problem exactly for all possible weighted input graphs.
However, there might be efficient algorithms that are guaranteed to find an answer that is at most a constant times away from the best possible answer, e.g. there might be an efficient algorithm that is guaranteed to find a path that has weight at least 1/2 of the maximum weight path.
If you are interested in searching for such algorithms, you could try Google searches for "weighted hamiltonian path approximation algorithm", which is close to, but not identical to, your problem. It is not the same because Hamiltonian paths are required to include all vertexes. Here is one research paper that might either contain, or have ideas that lead to, an approximation algorithm for your problem:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=139404.139468
"A general approximation technique for constrained forest problems" by Michel X. Goemans and David P. Williams.
Of course, if your graphs are small enough that you can enumerate all possible paths containing your desired vertex "fast enough for your purposes", then you can solve it exactly.

General purpose algorithm for triangulating an undirected graph?

I am playing around with implementing a junction tree algorithm for belief propagation on a Bayesian Network. I'm struggling a bit with triangulating the graph so the junction trees can be formed.
I understand that finding the optimal triangulation is NP-complete, but can you point me to a general purpose algorithm that results in a 'good enough' triangulation for relatively simple Bayesian Networks?
This is a learning exercise (hobby, not homework), so I don't care much about space/time complexity as long as the algorithm results in a triangulated graph given any undirected graph. Ultimately, I'm trying to understand how exact inference algorithms work before I even try doing any sort of approximation.
I'm tinkering in Python using NetworkX, but any pseudo-code description of such an algorithm using typical graph traversal terminology would be valuable.
Thanks!
If Xi is a possible variable (node) to be deleted then,
S(i) will be the size of the clique created by deleting this variable
C(i) will be the sum of the size of the cliques of the subgraph given by Xi and its adjacent nodes
Heuristic:
In each case select a variable Xi among the set of possible variables to be deleted with minimal S(i)/C(i)
Reference: Heuristic Algorithms for the Triangulation of Graphs

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