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Encyclopedia of Algorithms pp 335–338Cite as

Color Coding

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  • First Online:

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 1995; Alon, Yuster, Zwick

Problem Definition

Color coding [2] is a novel method used for solving, in polynomial time, various subcases of the generally NP-Hard subgraph isomorphism problem. The input for the subgraph isomorphism problem is an ordered pair of (possibly directed) graphs (G,H). The output is either a mapping showing that H is isomorphic to a (possibly induced) subgraph of G, or false if no such subgraph exists. The subgraph isomorphism problem includes, as special cases, the HAMILTON-PATH, CLIQUE, and INDEPENDENT SET problems, as well as many others. The problem is also interesting when H is fixed. The goal, in this case, is to design algorithms whose running times are significantly better than the running time of the naïve algorithm.

Method Description

The color coding method is a randomized method. The vertices of the graph \( { G = (V,E) } \) in which a subgraph isomorphic to \( { H = (V_H,E_H) } \)is sought are randomly...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Noga Alon

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Raphael Yuster

  3. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Uri Zwick

Authors
  1. Noga Alon
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  2. Raphael Yuster
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  3. Uri Zwick
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Noga Alon .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Alon, N., Yuster, R., Zwick, U. (2016). Color Coding. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_76

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