A Spectral Algorithm for Seriation and the Consecutive Ones Problem

  • Authors:
  • Jonathan E. Atkins;Erik G. Boman;Bruce Hendrickson

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • SIAM Journal on Computing
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

In applications ranging from DNA sequencing through archeological dating to sparse matrix reordering, a recurrent problem is the sequencing of elements in such a way that highly correlated pairs of elements are near each other. That is, given a correlation function f reflecting the desire for each pair of elements to be near each other, find all permutations $\pi$ with the property that if $\pi(i)seriation problem is a generalization of the well-studied consecutive ones problem. We present a spectral algorithm for this problem that has a number of interesting features. Whereas most previous applications of spectral techniques provide only bounds or heuristics, our result is an algorithm that correctly solves a nontrivial combinatorial problem. In addition, spectral methods are being successfully applied as heuristics to a variety of sequencing problems, and our result helps explain and justify these applications.