Visual Matching

This is a port of some educational software I wrote several years ago for Prof. Luis Goddyn of the Centre for Experimental and Constructive Mathematics, Simon Fraser University. I haven't yet implemented all the user-friendliness, animation and algorithms of the Macintosh C versions, but the applet demonstrates some potential for Java's use in visualization.

For the minimum weight non-bipartite perfect matching, the colours don't matter -- just enter some points, then hit step or go, and watch as the Java applet matches them up into pairs using the minimum total line length.

For the minimum weight bipartite perfect matching, enter the same number of red and blue points in the area provided below, watching as the Java applet finds the best way to marry all the blue points to the red points using the minimum total line length.

For the minimum weight spanning tree, the colours don't matter -- just enter some points and watch the Java applet connect them up into a network using the minimum total line length.

The minimum weight bipartite vertex cover algorithm is not working correctly yet.... :-(

The algorithms are based on some work in Geometric Duality and Combinatorial Optimization by M. Juenger, Universitaet zu Koeln and W.R. Pulleyblank, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.

Note: This applet was compiled with Sun's JDK version 1.02.

Michael Maguire Luis Goddyn

12 June 97