Homework 3

Josh Gorin
February, 2019

met on February 18 7:00-9:00 with Bempa, Jing, and Emily

met on February 19 7:00-9:00 with Bempa, Jing, and Emily

Problem 2

A) This statement is true. Because all of the edges are being squared, and
only the order of edges matter, not the actual value of each individual edge.
Since each edge C is being squared, they keep their order. Because we are using
Kruskal’s algorithm, this algorithm takes the lowest edge that connects a vertex
to another and adds it to the list. Because of this, this algorithm only looks at
the order of the edges.

B) This statement is false. Consider the graph G with vertices a,b,c with
the edges (a,b) being 3, (b,c) being 4, and (a,c) being 6. In this scenario, the
shortest path to get to c is the edge (a,c). However, when squaring each edge,
the shortest path would become (a,b) and then (b,c) because 9 + 16 < 36.

Problem 8

Proof:
1) Assume by way of contradiction there is some T’ that is an MST for G, along
with T.
2) Because these are two distinct trees with the same number of edges, there
must be some edge E’ that makes it distinct.
3) If E’ were to be inserted into T, this would create a cycle. Now consider E,
the highest valued edge within the cycle.
4) Because of part 3 it can be assumed that E is not in the MST, because of
the cut property theorem.
5) 4 also contradicts the fact that E must be in at least one of T or T’. Therefore
G has a unique MST.

Problem 9

1
 a) This statement is false.
Proof:
1) Assume there is some graph G with vertices (v1 , v2 , v3 , v4 ). The edges’ weights
are calculated by adding the vertices that connect together. For example, v1 to
v4 would be 5.
2) Therefore every tree must have a bottleneck edge of at least weight 5.
3) The MBT for this example would be the path v3 , v2 , v1 , v4
4) However, this is not the MST of the system. If v1 were to be connected to
every other vertex, the weight of the MST would be 12. This is less than that
of the MBT which is 13.
5)Therefore not all MBT’s are MST’s.

b) This statement is true.

Proof:
1) Assume that T is an MST in the set S. let T’ have a lower bottleneck edge.
2) Because of 1 it can be assumed that T has some edge e that is larger than
any in T’
3) Adding e to T’ results in creating a cycle. Since e was the highest weighted
edge in T’ it can be assumed that e is the largest weight within this cycle.
4) Because of 3 the cut property states that e cannot be in the MST because it
is the largest in the cycle. Therefore this contradicts the fact that it was in T,
or that T is an MST.