An Improved Fixed-Parameter Algorithm for One-Page Crossing Minimization

Book embedding is one of the most well-known graph drawing models and is extensively studied in the literature. The special case where the number of pages is one is of particular interest: an embedding in this case has a natural circular representation useful for visualization and graphs that can be embedded in one page without crossings form an important graph class, namely that of outerplanar graphs. In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the number of crossings in a one-page book embedding, which we call one-page crossing minimization. Here, we are given a graph G with n vertices together with a non-negative integer k and are asked whether G can be embedded into a single page with at most k crossings. Bannister and Eppstein (GD 2014) showed that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable. Their algorithm is derived through the application of Courcelle\u27s theorem (on graph properties definable in the monadic second-order logic of graphs) and runs in f(L)n time, where L = 2^{O(k^2)} is the length of the formula defining the property that the one-page crossing number is at most k and f is a computable function without any known upper bound expressible as an elementary function. We give an explicit dynamic programming algorithm with a drastically improved running time of 2^{O(k log k)}n

Fixed parameter tractability of crossing minimization of almost-trees

We investigate exact crossing minimization for graphs that differ from trees by a small number of additional edges, for several variants of the crossing minimization problem. In particular, we provide fixed parameter tractable algorithms for the 1-page book crossing number, the 2-page book crossing number, and the minimum number of crossed edges in 1-page and 2-page book drawings.Comment: Graph Drawing 201

Crossing Minimization for 1-page and 2-page Drawings of Graphs with Bounded Treewidth

We investigate crossing minimization for 1-page and 2-page book drawings. We show that computing the 1-page crossing number is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the number of crossings, that testing 2-page planarity is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to treewidth, and that computing the 2-page crossing number is fixed-parameter tractable with respect to the sum of the number of crossings and the treewidth of the input graph. We prove these results via Courcelle's theorem on the fixed-parameter tractability of properties expressible in monadic second order logic for graphs of bounded treewidth.Comment: Graph Drawing 201

Drawing Binary Tanglegrams: An Experimental Evaluation

A binary tanglegram is a pair of binary trees whose leaf sets are in one-to-one correspondence; matching leaves are connected by inter-tree edges. For applications, for example in phylogenetics or software engineering, it is required that the individual trees are drawn crossing-free. A natural optimization problem, denoted tanglegram layout problem, is thus to minimize the number of crossings between inter-tree edges. The tanglegram layout problem is NP-hard and is currently considered both in application domains and theory. In this paper we present an experimental comparison of a recursive algorithm of Buchin et al., our variant of their algorithm, the algorithm hierarchy sort of Holten and van Wijk, and an integer quadratic program that yields optimal solutions.Comment: see http://www.siam.org/proceedings/alenex/2009/alx09_011_nollenburgm.pd

Structural Rounding: Approximation Algorithms for Graphs Near an Algorithmically Tractable Class

We develop a framework for generalizing approximation algorithms from the structural graph algorithm literature so that they apply to graphs somewhat close to that class (a scenario we expect is common when working with real-world networks) while still guaranteeing approximation ratios. The idea is to edit a given graph via vertex- or edge-deletions to put the graph into an algorithmically tractable class, apply known approximation algorithms for that class, and then lift the solution to apply to the original graph. We give a general characterization of when an optimization problem is amenable to this approach, and show that it includes many well-studied graph problems, such as Independent Set, Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, Minimum Maximal Matching, Chromatic Number, (l-)Dominating Set, Edge (l-)Dominating Set, and Connected Dominating Set. To enable this framework, we develop new editing algorithms that find the approximately-fewest edits required to bring a given graph into one of a few important graph classes (in some cases these are bicriteria algorithms which simultaneously approximate both the number of editing operations and the target parameter of the family). For bounded degeneracy, we obtain an O(r log{n})-approximation and a bicriteria (4,4)-approximation which also extends to a smoother bicriteria trade-off. For bounded treewidth, we obtain a bicriteria (O(log^{1.5} n), O(sqrt{log w}))-approximation, and for bounded pathwidth, we obtain a bicriteria (O(log^{1.5} n), O(sqrt{log w} * log n))-approximation. For treedepth 2 (related to bounded expansion), we obtain a 4-approximation. We also prove complementary hardness-of-approximation results assuming P != NP: in particular, these problems are all log-factor inapproximable, except the last which is not approximable below some constant factor 2 (assuming UGC)

Experimental Evaluation of Book Drawing Algorithms

A $k$-page book drawing of a graph $G=(V,E)$ consists of a linear ordering of its vertices along a spine and an assignment of each edge to one of the $k$ pages, which are half-planes bounded by the spine. In a book drawing, two edges cross if and only if they are assigned to the same page and their vertices alternate along the spine. Crossing minimization in a $k$-page book drawing is NP-hard, yet book drawings have multiple applications in visualization and beyond. Therefore several heuristic book drawing algorithms exist, but there is no broader comparative study on their relative performance. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive benchmark set of challenging graph classes for book drawing algorithms and provide an extensive experimental study of the performance of existing book drawing algorithms.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

An improved neural network model for the two-page crossing number problem

The simplest graph drawing method is that of putting the vertices of a graph on a line and drawing the edges as half-circles either above or below the line. Such drawings are called 2-page book drawings. The smallest number of crossings over all 2-page drawings of a graph G is called the 2-page crossing number of G. Cimikowski and Shope have solved the 2-page crossing number problem for an n-vertex and m-edge graph by using a Hopfield network with 2m neurons. We present here an improved Hopfield modelwith m neurons. The new model achieves much better performance in the quality of solutions and is more efficient than the model of Cimikowski and Shope for all graphs tested. The parallel time complexity of the algorithm, without considering the crossing number calculations, is O(m), for the new Hopfield model with m processors clearly outperforming the previous algorithm