The Greedier the Better: An Efficient Algorithm for Approximating Maximum Independent Set

H.Y. Lau () and H.F. Ting ()
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H.Y. Lau: The University of Hong Kong
H.F. Ting: The University of Hong Kong

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 2001, vol. 5, issue 4, No 3, 420 pages

Abstract: Abstract The classical greedy heuristic for approximating maximum independent set is simple and efficient. It achieves a performance ratio of (Δ + 2)/3, where Δ is the maximum node degree of the input graph. All known algorithms for the problem with better performance ratios are much more complicated and inefficient. In this paper, we propose a natural extension of the greedy heuristic. It is as simple and as efficient as the classical greedy heuristic. By a careful analysis on the structure of the intermediate graphs manipulated by our heuristic, we prove that the performance ratio is improved to (Δ + 3)/3.25.

Keywords: greedy algorithms; approximation; combinatorial optimization; maximum independent set (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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DOI: 10.1023/A:1011672624624

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