Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Prim's algorithm has many applications, such as in the generation of this maze, which applies Prim's algorithm to a randomly weighted grid graph. The time complexity of Prim's algorithm depends on the data structures used for the graph and for ordering the edges by weight, which can be done using a priority queue. The following table shows the ...
A planar graph and its minimum spanning tree. Each edge is labeled with its weight, which here is roughly proportional to its length. A minimum spanning tree (MST) or minimum weight spanning tree is a subset of the edges of a connected, edge-weighted undirected graph that connects all the vertices together, without any cycles and with the minimum possible total edge weight. [1]
For example, Kruskal's algorithm processes edges in turn, deciding whether to include the edge in the MST based on whether it would form a cycle with all previously chosen edges. Both Prim's algorithm and Kruskal's algorithm require processes to know the state of the whole graph, which is very difficult to discover in the message-passing model.
An animation of generating a 30 by 20 maze using Prim's algorithm. This algorithm is a randomized version of Prim's algorithm. Start with a grid full of walls. Pick a cell, mark it as part of the maze. Add the walls of the cell to the wall list. While there are walls in the list: Pick a random wall from the list.
Greedy algorithms fail to produce the optimal solution for many other problems and may even produce the unique worst possible solution. One example is the travelling salesman problem mentioned above: for each number of cities, there is an assignment of distances between the cities for which the nearest-neighbour heuristic produces the unique ...
A minimum spanning tree of a weighted planar graph.Finding a minimum spanning tree is a common problem involving combinatorial optimization. Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, [1] where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set.
After Bell Laboratories, Prim became vice president of research at Sandia National Laboratories. During his career at Bell Laboratories, Robert Prim along with coworker Joseph Kruskal developed two different algorithms (see greedy algorithm) for finding a minimum spanning tree in a weighted graph, a basic stumbling block in computer network design.
Similarly to Prim's algorithm there are components in Kruskal's approach that can not be parallelised in its classical variant. For example, determining whether or not two vertices are in the same subtree is difficult to parallelise, as two union operations might attempt to join the same subtrees at the same time.