Searching in trees with monotonic query times
CoRR(2024)
摘要
We consider the following generalization of binary search in sorted arrays to
tree domains. In each step of the search, an algorithm is querying a vertex
q, and as a reply, it receives an answer, which either states that q is the
desired target, or it gives the neighbor of q that is closer to the target
than q. A further generalization assumes that a vertex-weight function
ω gives the query costs, i.e., the cost of querying q is ω(q).
The goal is to find an adaptive search strategy requiring the minimum cost in
the worst case. This problem is NP-complete for general weight functions and
one of the challenging open questions is whether there exists a polynomial-time
constant factor approximation algorithm for an arbitrary tree? In this work, we
prove that there exist a constant-factor approximation algorithm for trees with
a monotonic cost function, i.e., when the tree has a vertex v such that the
weights of the subsequent vertices on the path from v to any leaf give a
monotonic (non-increasing or non-decreasing) sequence S. This gives a
constant factor approximation algorithm for trees with cost functions such that
each such sequence S has a fixed number of monotonic segments. Finally, we
combine several earlier results to show that the problem is NP-complete when
the number of monotonic segments in S is at least 4.
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