Fitting Points on the Real Line and its Application to RH Mapping

. The Matrix-To-Line problem is that of, given an n n symmetric matrix D, finding an arrangement of n points on the real line such that the so obtained distances agree as well as possible with the by D specified distances, w.r.t. the max-norm. The Matrix-To-Line problem has previously been shown to be NP-complete [11]. We show that it can be approximated within 2, but not within 4/3 unless P=NP. We also show tight bounds under a stronger assumption. We show that the Matrix-To-Line problem cannot be approximated within 2 - # unless 3-colorable graphs can be colored with #4/## colors in polynomial time. Currently, the best polynomial time algorithm colors a 3-colorable graph with O(n 3/14 ) colors [4]. We apply our Matrix-To-Line algorithm to a problem in computational biology, namely, the Radiation Hybrid (RH) problem, i.e., the algorithmic part of a physical mapping method called RH mapping. This gives us the first algorithm with a guaranteed convergence for the general RH..