Fractional Matching
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Fractional Matching
In graph theory, a fractional matching is a generalization of a matching in which, intuitively, each vertex may be broken into fractions that are matched to different neighbor vertices. Definition Given a graph ''G'' = (''V'', ''E''), a fractional matching in ''G'' is a function that assigns, to each edge ''e'' in ''E'', a fraction ''f''(''e'') in , 1 such that for every vertex ''v'' in ''V'', the sum of fractions of edges adjacent to ''v'' is at most 1: \forall v\in V: \sum_f(e)\leq 1 A matching in the traditional sense is a special case of a fractional matching, in which the fraction of every edge is either 0 or 1: ''f''(''e'') = 1 if ''e'' is in the matching, and ''f''(''e'') = 0 if it is not. For this reason, in the context of fractional matchings, usual matchings are sometimes called ''integral matchings''. The size of an integral matching is the number of edges in the matching, and the matching number \nu(G) of a graph ''G'' is the largest size of a matching in ''G''. A ...
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Graph Theory
In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are connected by '' edges'' (also called ''links'' or ''lines''). A distinction is made between undirected graphs, where edges link two vertices symmetrically, and directed graphs, where edges link two vertices asymmetrically. Graphs are one of the principal objects of study in discrete mathematics. Definitions Definitions in graph theory vary. The following are some of the more basic ways of defining graphs and related mathematical structures. Graph In one restricted but very common sense of the term, a graph is an ordered pair G=(V,E) comprising: * V, a set of vertices (also called nodes or points); * E \subseteq \, a set of edges (also called links or lines), which are unordered pairs of vertices (that is, an edge is associated with t ...
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Matching (graph Theory)
In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, a matching or independent edge set in an undirected graph is a set of edges without common vertices. Finding a matching in a bipartite graph can be treated as a network flow problem. Definitions Given a graph a matching ''M'' in ''G'' is a set of pairwise non-adjacent edges, none of which are loops; that is, no two edges share common vertices. A vertex is matched (or saturated) if it is an endpoint of one of the edges in the matching. Otherwise the vertex is unmatched (or unsaturated). A maximal matching is a matching ''M'' of a graph ''G'' that is not a subset of any other matching. A matching ''M'' of a graph ''G'' is maximal if every edge in ''G'' has a non-empty intersection with at least one edge in ''M''. The following figure shows examples of maximal matchings (red) in three graphs. : A maximum matching (also known as maximum-cardinality matching) is a matching that contains the largest possible number of edges. ...
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Graph (discrete Mathematics)
In discrete mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a graph is a structure amounting to a Set (mathematics), set of objects in which some pairs of the objects are in some sense "related". The objects correspond to mathematical abstractions called ''Vertex (graph theory), vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') and each of the related pairs of vertices is called an ''edge'' (also called ''link'' or ''line''). Typically, a graph is depicted in diagrammatic form as a set of dots or circles for the vertices, joined by lines or curves for the edges. Graphs are one of the objects of study in discrete mathematics. The edges may be directed or undirected. For example, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge between two people if they shake hands, then this graph is undirected because any person ''A'' can shake hands with a person ''B'' only if ''B'' also shakes hands with ''A''. In contrast, if an edge from a person ''A'' to a person ''B'' m ...
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Bipartite Graph
In the mathematical field of graph theory, a bipartite graph (or bigraph) is a graph whose vertices can be divided into two disjoint and independent sets U and V, that is every edge connects a vertex in U to one in V. Vertex sets U and V are usually called the ''parts'' of the graph. Equivalently, a bipartite graph is a graph that does not contain any odd-length cycles. The two sets U and V may be thought of as a coloring of the graph with two colors: if one colors all nodes in U blue, and all nodes in V red, each edge has endpoints of differing colors, as is required in the graph coloring problem.. In contrast, such a coloring is impossible in the case of a non-bipartite graph, such as a triangle: after one node is colored blue and another red, the third vertex of the triangle is connected to vertices of both colors, preventing it from being assigned either color. One often writes G=(U,V,E) to denote a bipartite graph whose partition has the parts U and V, with E denoting ...
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Hall's Marriage Theorem
In mathematics, Hall's marriage theorem, proved by , is a theorem with two equivalent formulations: * The combinatorial formulation deals with a collection of finite sets. It gives a necessary and sufficient condition for being able to select a distinct element from each set. * The graph theoretic formulation deals with a bipartite graph. It gives a necessary and sufficient condition for finding a matching that covers at least one side of the graph. Combinatorial formulation Statement Let \mathcal F be a family of finite sets. Here, \mathcal F is itself allowed to be infinite (although the sets in it are not) and to contain the same set multiple times. Let X be the union of all the sets in \mathcal F, the set of elements that belong to at least one of its sets. A transversal for F is a subset of X that can be obtained by choosing a distinct element from each set in \mathcal F. This concept can be formalized by defining a transversal to be the image of an injective function f: ...
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Linear Programming
Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear function#As a polynomial function, linear relationships. Linear programming is a special case of mathematical programming (also known as mathematical optimization). More formally, linear programming is a technique for the mathematical optimization, optimization of a linear objective function, subject to linear equality and linear inequality Constraint (mathematics), constraints. Its feasible region is a convex polytope, which is a set defined as the intersection (mathematics), intersection of finitely many Half-space (geometry), half spaces, each of which is defined by a linear inequality. Its objective function is a real number, real-valued affine function, affine (linear) function defined on this polyhedron. A linear programming algorithm finds a point in the polytope where ...
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Maximum Flow Problem
In optimization theory, maximum flow problems involve finding a feasible flow through a flow network that obtains the maximum possible flow rate. The maximum flow problem can be seen as a special case of more complex network flow problems, such as the circulation problem. The maximum value of an s-t flow (i.e., flow from source s to sink t) is equal to the minimum capacity of an s-t cut (i.e., cut severing s from t) in the network, as stated in the max-flow min-cut theorem. History The maximum flow problem was first formulated in 1954 by T. E. Harris and F. S. Ross as a simplified model of Soviet railway traffic flow. In 1955, Lester R. Ford, Jr. and Delbert R. Fulkerson created the first known algorithm, the Ford–Fulkerson algorithm.Ford, L.R., Jr.; Fulkerson, D.R., ''Flows in Networks'', Princeton University Press (1962). In their 1955 paper, Ford and Fulkerson wrote that the problem of Harris and Ross is formulated as follows (see p. 5):Consider a rail network conn ...
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Doubly Stochastic Matrix
In mathematics, especially in probability and combinatorics, a doubly stochastic matrix (also called bistochastic matrix) is a square matrix X=(x_) of nonnegative real numbers, each of whose rows and columns sums to 1, i.e., :\sum_i x_=\sum_j x_=1, Thus, a doubly stochastic matrix is both left stochastic and right stochastic. Indeed, any matrix that is both left and right stochastic must be square: if every row sums to one then the sum of all entries in the matrix must be equal to the number of rows, and since the same holds for columns, the number of rows and columns must be equal. Birkhoff polytope The class of n\times n doubly stochastic matrices is a convex polytope known as the Birkhoff polytope B_n. Using the matrix entries as Cartesian coordinates, it lies in an (n-1)^2-dimensional affine subspace of n^2-dimensional Euclidean space defined by 2n-1 independent linear constraints specifying that the row and column sums all equal one. (There are 2n-1 constraints rather than ...
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Birkhoff's Algorithm
Birkhoff's algorithm (also called Birkhoff-von-Neumann algorithm) is an algorithm for decomposing a bistochastic matrix into a convex combination of permutation matrices. It was published by Garrett Birkhoff in 1946. It has many applications. One such application is for the problem of fair random assignment: given a randomized allocation of items, Birkhoff's algorithm can decompose it into a lottery on deterministic allocations. Terminology A ''bistochastic matrix'' (also called: ''doubly-stochastic'') is a matrix in which all elements are greater than or equal to 0 and the sum of the elements in each row and column equals 1. An example is the following 3-by-3 matrix: \begin 0.2 & 0.3 & 0.5 \\ 0.6 & 0.2 & 0.2 \\ 0.2 & 0.5 & 0.3 \end A ''permutation matrix'' is a special case of a bistochastic matrix, in which each element is either 0 or 1 (so there is exactly one "1" in each row and each column). An example is the following 3-by-3 matrix: \begin 0 & 1 & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \\ 1 & 0 & 0 ...
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Augmenting Path
In graph theory, a flow network (also known as a transportation network) is a directed graph where each edge has a capacity and each edge receives a flow. The amount of flow on an edge cannot exceed the capacity of the edge. Often in operations research, a directed graph is called a network, the vertices are called nodes and the edges are called arcs. A flow must satisfy the restriction that the amount of flow into a node equals the amount of flow out of it, unless it is a source, which has only outgoing flow, or sink, which has only incoming flow. A network can be used to model traffic in a computer network, circulation with demands, fluids in pipes, currents in an electrical circuit, or anything similar in which something travels through a network of nodes. Definition A network is a graph , where is a set of vertices and is a set of 's edges – a subset of – together with a non-negative function , called the capacity function. Without loss of generality, we may assume that ...
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Convex Polytope
A convex polytope is a special case of a polytope, having the additional property that it is also a convex set contained in the n-dimensional Euclidean space \mathbb^n. Most texts. use the term "polytope" for a bounded convex polytope, and the word "polyhedron" for the more general, possibly unbounded object. Others''Mathematical Programming'', by Melvyn W. Jeter (1986) p. 68/ref> (including this article) allow polytopes to be unbounded. The terms "bounded/unbounded convex polytope" will be used below whenever the boundedness is critical to the discussed issue. Yet other texts identify a convex polytope with its boundary. Convex polytopes play an important role both in various branches of mathematics and in applied areas, most notably in linear programming. In the influential textbooks of Grünbaum and Ziegler on the subject, as well as in many other texts in discrete geometry, convex polytopes are often simply called "polytopes". Grünbaum points out that this is solely to avoi ...
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Fractional Coloring
Fractional coloring is a topic in a young branch of graph theory known as fractional graph theory. It is a generalization of ordinary graph coloring. In a traditional graph coloring, each vertex in a graph is assigned some color, and adjacent vertices — those connected by edges — must be assigned different colors. In a fractional coloring however, a ''set'' of colors is assigned to each vertex of a graph. The requirement about adjacent vertices still holds, so if two vertices are joined by an edge, they must have no colors in common. Fractional graph coloring can be viewed as the linear programming relaxation of traditional graph coloring. Indeed, fractional coloring problems are much more amenable to a linear programming approach than traditional coloring problems. Definitions A ''b''-fold coloring of a graph ''G'' is an assignment of sets of size ''b'' to vertices of a graph such that adjacent vertices receive disjoint sets. An ''a'':''b''-coloring is a ''b''-fold colorin ...
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