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Searching for Sorted Sequences of Kings in Tournaments
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Searching for Sorted Sequences of Kings in Tournaments

Jian Shen, Li Sheng and Jie Wu
SIAM journal on computing, v 32(5), pp 1201-1209
01 Jan 2003

Abstract

Algorithms Applied mathematics Graph representations Neighborhoods Tournaments & championships
A tournamentTn is an orientation of a complete graph on n vertices. A king in a tournament is a vertex from which every other vertex is reachable by a path of length at most 2. A sorted sequence of kings in a tournament Tn is an ordered list of its vertices u1, u2, . . ., un such that ui dominates $u_{i+1}$ ($u_i \rightarrow u_{i+1}$) and $u_i$ is a king in the subtournament induced by $\{u_j: i \le j \le n\}$ for each i=1,2, . . .,n-1. In particular, if Tn is transitive, searching for a sorted sequence of kings in Tn is equivalent to sorting a set of n numbers. In this paper, we try to find a sorted sequence of kings in a general tournament by asking the following type of binary question: "What is the orientation of the edge between two specified vertices u, v?" The cost for finding a sorted sequence of kings is the minimum number of binary questions asked in order to guarantee the finding of a sorted sequence of kings. Using an adversary argument proposed in this paper, we showthat the cost for finding a sorted sequence of kings in Tn is $\Theta(n^{3/2})$ in the worst case, thus settling the order of magnitude of this question. We also show that the cost for finding a king in Tn is $\Omega(n^{4/3})$ and O(n3/2) in the worst case. Finally, we show a connection between a sorted sequence of kings and a median order in a tournament.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Computer Science, Theory & Methods
Mathematics, Applied
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