English

Estimating Weighted Matchings in $o(n)$ Space

Data Structures and Algorithms 2016-09-06 v3

Abstract

We consider the problem of estimating the weight of a maximum weighted matching of a weighted graph G(V,E)G(V,E) whose edges are revealed in a streaming fashion. We develop a reduction from the maximum weighted matching problem to the maximum cardinality matching problem that only doubles the approximation factor of a streaming algorithm developed for the maximum cardinality matching problem. Our results hold for the insertion-only and the dynamic (i.e, insertion and deletion) edge-arrival streaming models. The previous best-known reduction is due to Bury and Schwiegelshohn (ESA 2015) who develop an algorithm whose approximation guarantee scales by a polynomial factor. As an application, we obtain improved estimators for weighted planar graphs and, more generally, for weighted bounded-arboricity graphs, by feeding into our reduction the recent estimators due to Esfandiari et al. (SODA 2015) and to Chitnis et al. (SODA 2016). In particular, we obtain a (48+ϵ)(48+\epsilon)-approximation estimator for the weight of a maximum weighted matching in planar graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1604.07467,
  title  = {Estimating Weighted Matchings in $o(n)$ Space},
  author = {Elena Grigorescu and Morteza Monemizadeh and Samson Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.07467},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:40:40.616Z