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9 views2 pages

Sheet-13

Uploaded by

Vishakha Agarwal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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COL351: Analysis and Design of Algorithms Fall 2024

Practice Sheet 13
Announced on: Nov 15 (Thu)

1. Recall that in the V ERTEX C OVER problem, we are given an undirected graph G = (V, E) and
an integer k. The goal is to compute a subset of vertices S ⊆ V such that |S| ⩽ k and for every
edge e ∈ E, there exists a vertex v ∈ S such that e is incident to v. If no such subset exists,
declare “no solution”.
Suppose you have algorithm A, which, given a graph G and a number k, outputs YES if and
only if G has a vertex cover of size at most k. Assuming that A runs in polynomial time, show
that you can find a vertex cover of minimum size in polynomial time.

2. The D IRECTED H AMILTONIAN C YCLE problem is as follows: Given a directed graph G, is


there a cycle that contains all the vertices? Suppose you have a polynomial-time algorithm
for this problem. Show that you can also find such a cycle (if it exists) in polynomial time.

3. The U NDIRECTED H AMILTONIAN C YCLE problem can be defined similarly as above for
undirected graphs. The U NDIRECTED H AMILTONIAN PATH problem is as follows: Given an
undirected graph G, is there a path that contains all the vertices? Show that U NDIRECTED
H AMILTONIAN PATH reduces to U NDIRECTED H AMILTONIAN C YCLE.

4. Suppose you are consulting for a group that manages a high-performance real-time system in
which asynchronous processes use shared resources. Thus, the system has a set of n processes
and a set of m resources. At any given point in time, each process specifies a set of resources
that it requests to use. Many processes might request each resource at once; but it can only be
used by a single process at a time. Your job is to allocate resources to processes that request
them. If a process is allocated all the resources it requests, then it is active; otherwise, it is
blocked. You want to perform the allocation to maximize the number of active processes. Thus,
we phrase the R ESOURCE R ESERVATION problem as follows: Given a set of processes and
resources, the set of requested resources for each process, and a number k, is it possible to
allocate resources to processes so that at least k processes will be active? Show that R ESOURCE
R ESERVATION is NP-hard.
Hint: Show a reduction from I NDEPENDENT S ET.

5. Given an undirected graph G = (V, E), a feedback vertex set is a set X ⊆ V with the property
that G − X has no cycles. The U NDIRECTED F EEDBACK V ERTEX S ET problem asks the
following question: Given an undirected graph G and an integer k, does G contain a feedback

1
Tutorial Sheet 13:

vertex set of size at most k? Prove that the U NDIRECTED F EEDBACK V ERTEX S ET is NP-hard.
Hint: Show a reduction from V ERTEX C OVER.

6. Consider a set A = { a1 , . . . , an } and a collection B1 , B2 , . . . Bm of subsets of A. (That is, Bi ⊆ A


for each i.) We say that a set H ⊆ A is a hitting set for the collection B1 , B2 , . . . , Bm if H
contains at least one element from each Bi , i.e., if H ∩ Bi is nonempty for each i. We now
define the H ITTING S ET problem as follows: We are given a set A = { a1 , . . . , an }, a collection
B1 , B2 , . . . , Bm of subsets of A, and a number k. We are asked whether there exists a hitting
set H ⊆ A for B1 , B2 , . . . , Bm so that the size of H is at most k? Prove that H ITTING S ET is
NP-hard.
Hint: Show a reduction from V ERTEX C OVER.

7. In an undirected graph G = (V, E), we say a subset D ⊆ V is a dominating set if every v ∈ V


is either in D or adjacent to at least one member of D. In the D OMINATING S ET problem, the
input is a graph and a number k, and the aim is to find a dominating set in the graph of size
at most k, if one exists. Prove that this problem is NP-hard.
Hint: Show a reduction from V ERTEX C OVER.

8. Consider a greedy algorithm for V ERTEX C OVER that repeatedly picks a vertex that “covers”
the most uncovered edges. Show that there exist bipartite graphs on n vertices for which the
size of the vertex cover produced by the greedy algorithm can be at least Ω(log2 n) times the
size of the optimal vertex cover.

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