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Lecture

Minimum Spanning Trees

In course

CS-250: Algorithms I

The students learn the theory and practice of basic concepts and techniques in algorithms. The course covers mathematical induction, techniques for analyzing algorithms, elementary data structures, major algorithmic paradigms such as dynamic programming, s ...

Description

This lecture covers the implementation and analysis of disjoint sets data structure, including list representation, Make-Set, Find, Union, weighted-union heuristic, and great heuristics like Union by rank. It also introduces the concept of minimum spanning trees, explaining the origin, spanning tree of a graph, and Prim's and Kruskal's algorithms.

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Instructors (3)

Mikhail Kapralov

Ola Nils Anders Svensson

Alessandro Chiesa

Alessandro Chiesa is a faculty member in computer science. He conducts research in complexity theory, cryptography, and security, with a focus on the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of cryptographic proofs that are short and easy to verify. He is a co-author of several zkSNARK libraries, and is a co-inventor of the Zerocash protocol. He has co-founded Zcash and StarkWare Industries. He is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), an Okawa Foundation Research Grant (2020), and Google Faculty Research Awards (2018 and 2017). He was included in MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35" list in 2018.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Mathematics

Discrete mathematics: Graph theory

Related concepts (32)

Prim's algorithm

In computer science, Prim's algorithm (also known as Jarník's algorithm) is a greedy algorithm that finds a minimum spanning tree for a weighted undirected graph. This means it finds a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the total weight of all the edges in the tree is minimized. The algorithm operates by building this tree one vertex at a time, from an arbitrary starting vertex, at each step adding the cheapest possible connection from the tree to another vertex.

Minimum spanning tree

A minimum spanning tree (MST) or minimum weight spanning tree is a subset of the edges of a connected, edge-weighted undirected graph that connects all the vertices together, without any cycles and with the minimum possible total edge weight. That is, it is a spanning tree whose sum of edge weights is as small as possible. More generally, any edge-weighted undirected graph (not necessarily connected) has a minimum spanning forest, which is a union of the minimum spanning trees for its connected components.

Kruskal's algorithm

Kruskal's algorithm (also known as Kruskal's method) finds a minimum spanning forest of an undirected edge-weighted graph. If the graph is connected, it finds a minimum spanning tree. (A minimum spanning tree of a connected graph is a subset of the edges that forms a tree that includes every vertex, where the sum of the weights of all the edges in the tree is minimized. For a disconnected graph, a minimum spanning forest is composed of a minimum spanning tree for each connected component.

Spanning tree

In the mathematical field of graph theory, a spanning tree T of an undirected graph G is a subgraph that is a tree which includes all of the vertices of G. In general, a graph may have several spanning trees, but a graph that is not connected will not contain a spanning tree (see about spanning forests below). If all of the edges of G are also edges of a spanning tree T of G, then G is a tree and is identical to T (that is, a tree has a unique spanning tree and it is itself).

Borůvka's algorithm

Borůvka's algorithm is a greedy algorithm for finding a minimum spanning tree in a graph, or a minimum spanning forest in the case of a graph that is not connected. It was first published in 1926 by Otakar Borůvka as a method of constructing an efficient electricity network for Moravia. The algorithm was rediscovered by Choquet in 1938; again by Florek, Łukasiewicz, Perkal, Steinhaus, and Zubrzycki in 1951; and again by Georges Sollin in 1965. This algorithm is frequently called Sollin's algorithm, especially in the parallel computing literature.

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Minimum Spanning Trees: Prim's Algorithm

Explores Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning trees and introduces the Traveling Salesman Problem.

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Explores Prim's and Kruskal's algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees in a graph, covering their correctness, implementation, and analysis.

Graph Algorithms II: Traversal and Paths

Explores graph traversal methods, spanning trees, and shortest paths using BFS and DFS.

Algorithms: Union Find and Minimum Spanning Trees

Discusses Union-Find data structures and Minimum Spanning Trees, covering algorithms and their applications in network design and optimization.

Shortest Paths: Negative Weights & Applications