Abstract
The problem of computing the rSPR distance of two given trees has many applications but is unfortunately NP-hard. The previously best approximation algorithm for rSPR distance achieves a ratio of 2.5 and it was open whether a better approximation algorithm for rSPR distance exists. In this paper, we answer this question in the affirmative by presenting an approximation algorithm for rSPR distance that achieves a ratio of \(\frac{7}{3}\). Our algorithm is based on the new notion of key and several new structural lemmas.
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Chen, ZZ., Machida, E., Wang, L. (2016). An Improved Approximation Algorithm for rSPR Distance. In: Dinh, T., Thai, M. (eds) Computing and Combinatorics . COCOON 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9797. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42634-1_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42634-1_38
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