CSCI 3104: Algorithms
Homework 5
1. Professor F. Lake suggests the following algorithm for finding the shortest path from
node s to node t in a directed graph with some negative edges: add a large constant to
each edge weight so that all the weights become positive, then run Dijkstra’s algorithm
starting at node s, and return the shortest path found to node t. Is this a valid method?
Either prove that it works correctly, or give a counterexample.
2. There is a network of roads G = (V, E) connecting a set of cities V . Each road in E
has an associated length le. There is a proposal to add one new road to this network,
and there is a list E
0 of pairs of cities between which the new road can be built. Each
such potential road e
0 ∈ E
0 has an associated length. As a designer for the public works
department you are asked to determine the road e
0 ∈ E
0 whose addition to the existing
network G would result in the maximum decrease in the driving distance between two
fixed cities s and t in the network. Give an efficient algorithm for solving this problem
and analyze its time complexity.
3. A chain of words is a list of words where the i-th word is the (i − 1)st word with
one extra character and some reordering of letters. For example, AN, TAN, RANT,
TRAIN, RETINA, NASTIER is a chain of length 6. Write a python program that
reads a wordlist filename via command line and finds the longest chain in the wordlist
file. A sample wordlist file is provided at moodle via a separate link. Print out three
example chains you can find in this file that have the maximum length (there will be
a TON... just give three chains).
HINT: In order to do this, first build a DAG. The DAG will consist of a node for each
word (you might want to collapse words into a single node when it makes sense to),
and an edge from word x to word y if y can follow x in a chain. Then run DFS from
each source node in the DAG and keep track of the maximum depth you reach.
