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Competitive Search in Symmetric Trees

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Algorithms and Data Structures (WADS 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6844))

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Abstract

We consider the problem of searching for one of possibly many goals situated at unknown nodes in an unknown tree \(\cal T\). We formulate a universal search strategy and analyse the competitiveness of its average (over all presentations of \(\cal T\)) total search cost with respect to strategies that are informed concerning the number and location of goals in \(\cal T\). Our results generalize earlier work on the multi-list traversal problem, which itself generalizes the well-studied m-lane cow-path problem. Like these earlier works our results have applications in areas beyond geometric search problems, including the design of hybrid algorithms and the minimization of expected completion time for Las Vegas algorithms.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia, Canada

    David Kirkpatrick

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Regina, Canada

    Sandra Zilles

Authors
  1. David Kirkpatrick
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  2. Sandra Zilles
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Parallel Computing and Bioinformatics Laboratory, Carleton University, VISM Building, Room 6210, 1125 Colonel By Drive, K1S 5B6, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Frank Dehne

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, 5 MetroTech Center, 11201, New York, NY, USA

    John Iacono

  3. School of Computer Science, Herzberg Laboratories, Carleton University, Herzberg Building, Room 5350, 1125 Colonel By Drive, K1S 5B6, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Jörg-Rüdiger Sack

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kirkpatrick, D., Zilles, S. (2011). Competitive Search in Symmetric Trees. In: Dehne, F., Iacono, J., Sack, JR. (eds) Algorithms and Data Structures. WADS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6844. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22300-6_47

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22300-6_47

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22299-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22300-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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