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Finding an Unknown Acyclic Orientation of a Given Graph

Combinatorics 2009-04-09 v1 Information Theory math.IT

Abstract

Let c(G) be the smallest number of edges we have to test in order to determine an unknown acyclic orientation of the given graph G in the worst case. For example, if G is the complete graph on n vertices, then c(G) is the smallest number of comparisons needed to sort n numbers. We prove that c(G)\le (1/4+o(1))n^2 for any graph G on n vertices, answering in the affirmative a question of Aigner, Triesch, and Tuza [Discrete Mathematics, 144 (1995) 3-10]. Also, we show that, for every e>0, it is NP-hard to approximate the parameter c(G) within a multiplicative factor 74/73-e.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0904.1229,
  title  = {Finding an Unknown Acyclic Orientation of a Given Graph},
  author = {Oleg Pikhurko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.1229},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:49:14.728Z