38,564 research outputs found
On the Complexity of Searching in Trees: Average-case Minimization
We focus on the average-case analysis: A function w : V -> Z+ is given which
defines the likelihood for a node to be the one marked, and we want the
strategy that minimizes the expected number of queries. Prior to this paper,
very little was known about this natural question and the complexity of the
problem had remained so far an open question.
We close this question and prove that the above tree search problem is
NP-complete even for the class of trees with diameter at most 4. This results
in a complete characterization of the complexity of the problem with respect to
the diameter size. In fact, for diameter not larger than 3 the problem can be
shown to be polynomially solvable using a dynamic programming approach.
In addition we prove that the problem is NP-complete even for the class of
trees of maximum degree at most 16. To the best of our knowledge, the only
known result in this direction is that the tree search problem is solvable in
O(|V| log|V|) time for trees with degree at most 2 (paths).
We match the above complexity results with a tight algorithmic analysis. We
first show that a natural greedy algorithm attains a 2-approximation.
Furthermore, for the bounded degree instances, we show that any optimal
strategy (i.e., one that minimizes the expected number of queries) performs at
most O(\Delta(T) (log |V| + log w(T))) queries in the worst case, where w(T) is
the sum of the likelihoods of the nodes of T and \Delta(T) is the maximum
degree of T. We combine this result with a non-trivial exponential time
algorithm to provide an FPTAS for trees with bounded degree
Incremental and Decremental Maintenance of Planar Width
We present an algorithm for maintaining the width of a planar point set
dynamically, as points are inserted or deleted. Our algorithm takes time
O(kn^epsilon) per update, where k is the amount of change the update causes in
the convex hull, n is the number of points in the set, and epsilon is any
arbitrarily small constant. For incremental or decremental update sequences,
the amortized time per update is O(n^epsilon).Comment: 7 pages; 2 figures. A preliminary version of this paper was presented
at the 10th ACM/SIAM Symp. Discrete Algorithms (SODA '99); this is the
journal version, and will appear in J. Algorithm
Synchronisation Properties of Trees in the Kuramoto Model
We consider the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators, specifically the case
of tree networks, for which we prove a simple closed-form expression for the
critical coupling. For several classes of tree, and for both uniform and
Gaussian vertex frequency distributions, we provide tight closed form bounds
and empirical expressions for the expected value of the critical coupling. We
also provide several bounds on the expected value of the critical coupling for
all trees. Finally, we show that for a given set of vertex frequencies, there
is a rearrangement of oscillator frequencies for which the critical coupling is
bounded by the spread of frequencies.Comment: 21 pages, 19 Figure
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