We present a probabilistic algorithm that, given a connected graph G (represented by adjacency lists) of average degree d, with edge weights in the set {1,...,w}, and given a parameter 0 < ε < 1/2, estimates in time O(dwε−2 log dw ε) the weight of the minimum span-ning tree of G with a relative error of at most ε. Note that the running time does not depend on the number of vertices in G. We also prove a nearly matching lower bound of Ω(dwε−2) on the probe and time complexity of any approximation algorithm for MST weight. The essential component of our algorithm is a procedure for estimating in time O(dε−2 log d ε) the number of connected components of an unweighted graph to within an additive error of εn. (This becomes O(ε−2 log 1 ε) for d = O(1).) The time bound is shown to be tight up to within the log d ε factor. Our connected-components algorithm picks O(1/ε2) vertices in the graph and then grows “local spanning trees” whose sizes are specified by a stochastic process. From the local information collected in this way, the algorithm is able to infer, with high confidence, an estimate of the number of connected components. We then show how estimates on the number of components in various subgraphs of G can be used to estimate the weight of its MST. 1

We present a new all-pairs shortest path algorithm that works with real-weighted graphs in the traditional comparison-addition model. It runs in O(mn+n time, improving on the long-standing bound of O(mn + n log n) derived from an implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm with Fibonacci heaps. Here m and n are the number of edges and vertices, respectively.

In this paper we present a sublinear time (1+ ɛ)-approximation randomized algorithm to estimate the weight of the minimum spanning tree of an n-point metric space. The running time of the algorithm is Õ(n/ɛO(1)). Since the full description of an n-point metric space is of size Θ(n 2),the complexity of our algorithm is sublinear with respect to the input size. Our algorithm is almost optimal as it is not possible to approximate in o(n) time the weight of the minimum spanning tree to within any factor. Furthermore,it has been previously shown that no o(n 2) algorithm exists that returns a spanning tree whose weight is within a constant times the optimum.

This paper resolves a long-standing open problem on whether the concurrent write capability of parallel random access machine (PRAM) is essential for solving fundamental graph problems like connected components and minimum spanning trees in O(log n) time. Specically, we present a new algorithm to solve these problems in O(log n) time using a linear number of processors on the exclusive-read exclusive-write PRAM. The logarithmic time bound is actually optimal since it is well known that even computing the \OR" of n bits

The problem of verifying a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) was introduced by Tarjan in a sequential setting. Given a graph and a tree that spans it, the algorithm is required to check whether this tree is an MST. This paper investigates the problem in the distributed setting, where the input is given in a distributed manner, i.e., every node “knows ” which of its own emanating edges belong to the tree. Informally, the distributed MST verification problem is the following. Label the vertices of the graph in such a way that for every node, given (its own label and) the labels of its neighbors only, the node can detect whether these edges are indeed its MST edges. In this paper we present such a verification scheme with a maximum label size of O(log n log W), where n is the number of nodes and W is the largest weight of an edge. We also give a matching lower bound of Ω(log n log W) (except when W ≤ log n). Both our bounds improve previously known bounds for the problem. Our techniques (both for the lower bound and for the upper bound) may indicate a strong relation between the fields of proof labeling schemes and implicit labeling schemes. For the related problem of tree sensitivity also presented by Tarjan, our method yields rather efficient schemes for both the distributed and the sequential settings.

We evaluate the practical eciency of a new shortest path algorithm for undirected graphs which was developed by the rst two authors. This algorithm works on the fundamental comparison-addition model.

Abstract. We present a new scheme for computing shortest paths on real-weighted undirected graphs in the fundamental comparison-addition model. In an efficient preprocessing phase our algorithm creates a linear-size structure that facilitates single-source shortest path computations in O(m log α) time, where α = α(m, n) is the very slowly growing inverse-Ackermann function, m the number of edges, and n the number of vertices. As special cases our algorithm implies new bounds on both the all-pairs and single-source shortest paths problems. We solve the all-pairs problem in O(mnlog α(m, n)) time and, if the ratio between the maximum and minimum edge lengths is bounded by n (log n)O(1) , we can solve the single-source problem in O(m + nlog log n) time. Both these results are theoretical improvements over Dijkstra’s algorithm, which was the previous best for real weighted undirected graphs. Our algorithm takes the hierarchy-based approach invented by Thorup. Key words. single-source shortest paths, all-pairs shortest paths, undirected graphs, Dijkstra’s

We present a simple new (randomized) algorithm for computing minimum spanning trees that is more than two times faster than the best previously known algorithms (for dense, "difficult" inputs). It is of conceptual interest that the algorithm uses the property that the heaviest edge in a cycle can be discarded. Previously this has only been exploited in asymptotically optimal algorithms that are considered impractical. An additional advantage is...

Let A be a set of size m. Obtaining the first k ≤ m elements of A in ascending order can be done in optimal O(m+k log k) time. We present an algorithm (online on k) which incrementally gives the next smallest element of the set, so that the first k elements are obtained in optimal time for any k. We also give a practical algorithm with the same complexity on average, which improves in practice the existing online algorithm. As a direct application, we use our technique to implement Kruskal’s Minimum Spanning Tree algorithm, where our solution is competitive with the best current implementations. We finally show that our technique can be applied to several other problems, such as obtaining an interval of the sorted sequence and implementing heaps. 1

The proliferation of video content on the web makes similarity detection an indispensable tool in web data management, searching, and navigation. We have previously proposed a compact representation of video clips, called video signature, for retrieving similar video clips in large databases. In this paper, we propose a new signature clustering algorithm to further improve retrieval performance. The algorithm treats all the signatures as an abstract threshold graph, where the threshold is determined based on local data statistics. Similar clusters are identified as highly connected regions in the graph. This algorithm outperforms simple thresholding and hierarchical clustering techniques in identifying a set of manually-determined similar clusters from a dataset of 46,356 web video clips. At 95% precision, our algorithm attains 85% recall while simple thresholding and complete-link hierarchical scheme attain 67% and 75% recall respectively. Applying our algorithm to the entire dataset, 6,900 similar clusters are identified, with an average cluster size of 2.81 video clips. The distribution of cluster sizes follows a power-law distribution, which has been shown to describe many web phenomena.