When Crossings Count - Approximating the Minimum Spanning Tree
Abstract
In the first part of the paper, we present an (1+\mu)-approximation algorithm to the minimum-spanning tree of points in a planar arrangement of lines, where the metric is the number of crossings between the spanning tree and the lines. The expected running time is O((n/\mu^5) alpha^3(n) log^5 n), where \mu > 0 is a prescribed constant. In the second part of our paper, we show how to embed such a crossing metric, into high-dimensions, so that the distances are preserved. As a result, we can deploy a large collection of subquadratic approximations algorithms \cite im-anntr-98,giv-rahdg-99 for problems involving points with the crossing metric as a distance function. Applications include matching, clustering, nearest-neighbor, and furthest-neighbor.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cs/0303001,
title = {When Crossings Count - Approximating the Minimum Spanning Tree},
author = {Sariel Har-Peled and Piotr Indyk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0303001},
year = {2009}
}