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### Paper:

TR19-158 | 11th November 2019 18:27

#### Sorting Can Exponentially Speed Up Pure Dynamic Programming

TR19-158
Authors: Stasys Jukna, Hannes Seiwert
Publication: 11th November 2019 20:19
Keywords:

Abstract:

Many discrete minimization problems, including various versions of the shortest path problem, can be efficiently solved by dynamic programming (DP) algorithms that are pure'' in that they only perform basic operations, as $\min$, $\max$, $+$, but no conditional branchings via if-then-else in their recursion equations. It is known that any pure $(\min,+)$ DP algorithm solving the minimum weight spanning tree problem on undirected $n$-vertex graphs must perform at least $2^{\Omega(\sqrt{n})}$ operations. We show that this problem \emph{can} be solved by a pure $(\min,\max,+)$ DP algorithm performing only $O(n^3)$ operations. The algorithm is essentially a $(\min,\max)$ algorithm: addition operations are only used to output the final values. The presence of both $\min$ and $\max$ operations means that now DP algorithms can sort: this explains the title of the paper.

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