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NEW RESULTS FOR THE MINIMUM WEIGHT TRIANGULATION PROBLEM
Journal article   Peer reviewed

NEW RESULTS FOR THE MINIMUM WEIGHT TRIANGULATION PROBLEM

L S Heath and S V Pemmaraju
Algorithmica, Vol.12(6), pp.533-552
12/01/1994
DOI: 10.1007/BF01188718

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Abstract

Given a finite set of points in a plane, a triangulation is a maximal set of nonintersecting line segments connecting the points. The weight of a triangulation is the sum of the Euclidean lengths of its line segments. No polynomial-time algorithm is known to find a triangulation of minimum weight, nor is the minimum weight triangulation problem known to be NP-hard. This paper proposes a new heuristic algorithm that triangulates a set of n points in O(n(3)) time and that never produces a triangulation whose weight is greater than that of a greedy triangulation. The algorithm produces an optimal triangulation if the points are the vertices of a convex polygon. Experimental results indicate that this algorithm rarely produces a nonoptimal triangulation and performs much better than a seemingly similar heuristic of Lingas. In the direction of showing the minimum weight triangulation problem is NP-hard, two generalizations that are quite close to the minimum weight triangulation problem are shown to be NP-hard.
Computer Science Mathematics Physical Sciences Technology Computer Science, Software Engineering Mathematics, Applied Science & Technology

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