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When Crossings Count - Approximating the Minimum Spanning Tree

Sariel Har-Peled·Piotr Indyk
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Abstract

In the first part of the paper, we present an (1+μ)-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/μ^5) alpha^3(n) log^5 n), where μ> 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.

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Sariel Har-Peled, Piotr Indyk. 2003-03-01. When Crossings Count - Approximating the Minimum Spanning Tree. https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0303001

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