CSC 373 H1

Worth: 1%

Tutorial # 2

Fall 2015

Due: At the beginning of tutorial (Thursday October 1st )

1. (a) Prove or disprove: If e is a minimum-weight edge in connected graph G (where not all edge
weights are necessarily distinct), then every minimum spanning tree of G contains e.
(b) Does your answer change if w(e) is unique (no other edge in G has the same weight as e, but
w(e) is still the smallest)? Again, prove your answer.
(c) (**) Explore: what is the most general property of an edge e, in the most general kind of input
graph G, for which you can guarantee that e either belongs (or does not belong) to every MST
of G? What if we only require that it belongs (or does not belong) to -some- MST?
2. Consider the reverse-delete algorithm to find MSTs:
sort edges by non-increasing weight: w(e1 ) >= ... >= w(en )
T < E
for j < 1, 2, ..., m:
if T ej is connected:
T < T ej
return T
(a) Prove that this algorithm always finds a MST. Use the proof structure from class (proving that
every partial solution is promising by induction), suitably adapted to fit the algorithm.
(b) (**) What is the most efficient implementation you can think of, and what is its worst-case
running time?

Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto, St. George Campus

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