MAXFLOW AND MINCUT STUDY GUIDE


Key Concepts

Maxflow, mincut, and Ford-Fulkerson basics

Ford-Fulkerson details

Residual network

Recommended Problems

C level

  1. Consider the following st-flow network and feasible flow f.
    1. What is the value of the flow f?
    2. Perform one iteration of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm, starting from the flow f. Give the sequence of vertices on the augmenting path.
    3. What is the value of the maximum flow?
    4. List the vertices on the s side of the minimum cut.
    5. What is the capacity of the minimum cut?
    Answers
  2. Spring 2012, #11
  3. Fall 2012, #6

B level

  1. Textbook 6.36
  2. Textbook 6.38

A level

  1. The instructors plan to grade the final, May 20. They have scheduled 8 hours for it. Each instructor prefers to grade only a certain subset of the 11 problems. They have represented their preferences in a graph in which a grader is connected to a problem if they are willing to grade it.

    Each grader has a grading speed, and each problem has a grading difficulty. If a problem with difficulty d is graded by an instructor with speed s, it will take d/s minutes to grade. There are N problems and M instructors; S students took the exam.

    Design an algorithm to determine if the instructors will be able to finish grading within the scheduled 8 hours, respecting their grading preferences.

    What is the order-of-growth worst-case running time of your algorithm in terms of M and N? Assume that the speeds and difficulties are bounded by a constant.

    Hint: formulate it as a max-flow problem and invoke a known algorithm for solving max-flow. You might want to draw a graph to illustrate how you construct a max-flow problem. Answers

  2. Textbook 6.37