MINIMUM SPANNING TREE

Computer Science is basically based on an element and that is DATA. With the help of different
data sets computer gives the required output. There are several ways of arranging these types of
data sets according to their practices and one of the data structure is MINIMUM SPANNING
TREE. An ACYCLIC graph having n vertices and n-1 edges is known as TREE. A symmetric and
undirected graph without looping is called as SPANNING TREE. A spanning tree with minimum
weight is called MINIMUM SPANNING TREE that is if a graph’s weight (for example, distance or
cost) associated with the edges, than the weight of the graph is the sum of the weights of all its
edges.

Czech scientist Otakar Boruvka was the first man of discovering the first algorithm of minimum
spanning tree in 1926 for the intention of efficient electrical coverage. There are many
algorithms to find minimum spanning tree but two are the most efficient namely KRUSKAL’S
algorithm and PRIM’S algorithm.

KRUSKAL’S ALGORITHM:

This algorithm was described by Kruskal in 1956.

Suppose a telecom company want to connect five offices

to their network.

 What is the Minimum Spanning Tree of this

problem?
 What is the minimum length of cabling required
for connecting all the offices?
1. List weights in ascending order.
2. Choose the edge having smallest weight.

3. Select the next smallest weight that does not

complete the cycle.

4. Repeat step 3 until all vertices are connected.

 Repeating step 3.

Here we stop because all the vertices are

connected with each other.
Red line shows the minimum spanning tree.
The minimum length of cabling required to
connect the offices is 18km as shown in figure.
 The time complexity of kruskal’s algorithm is O(E log E).

PRIM’S ALGORITHM:
PRIM’S algorithm was first described by the Polish mathematician in 1929 letter to
Brouvka. This algorithm was rediscovered by DIJKSTRA in1958.
This algorithm follows the strategy of starting with a small tree and increasing it until it
includes all vertices in the given graph. The idea of prim’s algorithm is a priority first
search. Primarily the tree contains a random initial node. The time complexity of prim’s
algorithm is O(|V|2).

PRIM’S algorithm stated as:

1. First select any vertex.
2. Select the shortest edge connected to that vertex.
3. Select the shortest edge connected to any vertex already connected.
4. Repeat step 3 until all vertices have been connected.

The important thing to remember is that both algorithms always gives solutions with the same
length. Occasionally they use different edges. This may happen when you have to choose
between two edges with the same length. In this case there is more than one minimum
connecter for the network.
An edge of a spanning tree is known as ‘branch’ and the edge that is not in the spanning tree is
commonly called as ‘chord’. One of its algorithms is called as GREEDY SPANNING TREE
ALGORITHM. It stated as:
“Examine the edges in graph in any arbitrary sequence and decide whether each edge will be
included in the spanning tree or not”.
In this algorithm each time a step of algorithm is performed, one of its edges is examined. If
there is finite number of edges in the graph, the algorithm halts after a finite number of steps.
So, the time complexity of the algorithm is O(n), where n is the number of edges in the graph.

There are many examples in real life where minimum spanning tree applies. When there is a
need to connect NODES such as houses, factories, internet, and electrical terminals by EDGES
such as wires, roads and pipe lines etc. which are WEIGHTED by length, cost or time then the
minimum spanning tree is the solution to your problem. We construct minimum spanning tree
when we want to find a cheap, efficient and simple way to set a certain kind of networks or
terminals. Spanning trees are important because they construct a sparse sub graph that tells
much about the original graph. It is also significant for designing efficient routing algorithms;
hard problems like traveling salesman problem can be solved by using minimum spanning tree.
Minimum Spanning tree also plays a vital role in wide applications such as network designing
(like TV cables, electrical, hydraulic, telephone lines, computers, sewerage lines, water pipe lines,
bridging etc).
Minimum Spanning Tree is a fundamental problem with diverse applications. Optimal message
passing is also its application where it distributes messages to N agents. It also uses to reduce
data storage commonly in sequencing amino acid in a protein. All-pairs Minimax path problem
is also its application. In Cluster Analysis it uses to delete long and expensive edges and leaves
connected components, finding cluster of quasars and sayfart galaxies and for analyzing fungal
spore spatial patterns.
MST has many applications for the efficiency in networking. An indirect application of
minimum spanning tree includes learning silent features for the real time face verification,
registration for image with Renyi entropy, modeling locality of particle interactions in turbulent
fluid flow, max bottleneck path and LDCP codes for error correction.
Application of minimum spanning tree is not just end here, it also used in medical field for the
treatment purposes. It also used for Medical Image Processing for the arrangement nuclei in
skin cell for cancer research. Cognitive processes based on neural activation patterns which are
acquired via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in brain is also find by minimum
spanning tree. Density and Hierarchical based approaches are adopted in the algorithm also
uses minimum spanning tree for the solution. Most of the games are also based on the
minimum spanning tree approaches. Hence, Minimum Spanning Tree is very helpful in solving
the problems in an efficient way either in a field of Computer Science, Engineering or in medical.

REFRENCES:

 Anonymous. (2010). spanning tree and its technical definition.

 Anonymous. (2012). How to find minimum spanning tree. New Zealand: Curriculum guides.

 Geeks. (2012). Application on MST problems.

 (2009). minimum spanning trees(lecture 12).

 Muhammad, R. b. (2010). Spanning tree and minimum spanning tree. Kent state university.

 Orhan Firat, M. O. (2012). Representation of Cognitive Process using the MST for local Meshes.
2-3.

 Peter, S. (2012). Local Density-based Hirarchical clusturing using MST. 1-2.

 Studymode. (2013). minimum spanning trees.

 (n.d.). wiki (MST_history).

 (n.d.). wiki (prim's algo_complexity).

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