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Informatik: Universit at Des Saarlandes

This document contains exercises related to randomized algorithms. Exercise 1 asks to construct a directed graph that is strongly connected but has an expected cover time that is exponential in the number of vertices. Exercise 2 asks to show that there is a tournament with at least n2(n-1) Hamiltonian paths. Exercise 3 involves properties of a discrete random walk, including the probability of reaching one point before another and the expected number of steps. Exercise 4 asks to analyze the expected length of the smallest interval formed by randomly selecting points on a line segment.

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27 views

Informatik: Universit at Des Saarlandes

This document contains exercises related to randomized algorithms. Exercise 1 asks to construct a directed graph that is strongly connected but has an expected cover time that is exponential in the number of vertices. Exercise 2 asks to show that there is a tournament with at least n2(n-1) Hamiltonian paths. Exercise 3 involves properties of a discrete random walk, including the probability of reaching one point before another and the expected number of steps. Exercise 4 asks to analyze the expected length of the smallest interval formed by randomly selecting points on a line segment.

Uploaded by

venugopal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PS, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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R

IS

UN

Dr. Surender Baswana

FR 6.2 Informatik

E R SIT

I N F O R M A T I K

SA

Universitat
des
Saarlandes

IV

A VIE N

WS 2004/5

Exercises for Randomized Algorithms


7. Assignment

Due : 24 February.

Be very rigorous in your arguments. Specify any probability Lemma/Theorem explicitly before you use it.
Exercise 1 (4)
Show that the expected time for a random walk to visit every vertex of a strongly connected graph is not
necessarily bounded by polynomial function of n, the number of vertices. In other words, construct a directed
graph that is strongly connected and where the expected cover time is exponential in terms of n.
Exercise 2 (2)
Show that there is a tournament T with n players with at-least n2

(n

1)

Hamiltonian paths.

Exercise 3 (1,3)
Consider the usual one dimensional discrete random walk, in which the particle moves towards right if it is at
origin and at every other point it just moves to left/right with probability 1/2.
a) Let i; j; k be three non-negative integers with i < j < k . Suppose the particle is at j , what is the
probability that the particle reaches k before hitting i even once ?
b) Given that starting at j , the particle reaches k before ever hitting i, what is the expected number of steps
of the walk ?
Exercise 4 (5)
(A probability gem) Recall the following problem I talked about in the beginning of the course : If we select
k points uniformly randomly from the line segment [0; 1, hence partitioning it into k + 1 intervals, what is the
expected size of smallest interval thus formed. This is a problem in continuous probability. Since some of you
might be uncomfortable with continuous probability, so we shall solve its discrete version :
Given a set of n integers 1; 2;    n, we select k integers (k << n) from it one after another uniformly independently and without replacement. In this way, the set gets partitioned into k + 1 intervals defined by the sampled
points. Show that the expected length of the smallest interval is  (n=k 2 ).
For example, if n = 10 and we select two numbers 4 and 8, there are now three intervals [1; 4; [4; 8; [8; 10.
The smallest interval would be [8; 10 and its length is 2.
Let Xi be the length of the smallest interval after selecting i integers. Note that Xi+1 is either of same length
as Xi or is smaller than Xi .
In order to compute E[Xk , we shall use two different ways to compute the probability of event Xi+1 < Xi
as follows.
a) Using arguments similar to those used in the analysis of the randomized incremental algorithm for finding
the closest pairs in a set of n points, show that

P[X

i+1

< Xi = 

i+1

b) Let Xi
that

r , that is the smallest interval after selecting i points in the [0; 1 interval is of length r . Show
(i + 1)(r

1)

 P[X

i+1

< r Xi = r

c) show that

E[X = 

r
 2(i + 1)(
n

1)

n

i2

Hints
1 Look at the graph in the figure shown below. Show that the expected time required to reach from 1 to n
is  (2n ). For this, just write appropriate recurrence and try to solve it.

i1

i+1

n1

3(b) This is same as the random walk starting at j and with reflecting barrier at i + 1, that is, the particle on
reaching i + 1 always moves right.
4 Relate the parts a and b with the help of the equality

P[X

i+1

< Xi =

P[X

i+1

< r Xi = r : [Xi = r

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