Lecture 13 10/25/1994 Graph Algorithms Prof. Steve Homer Guest lecturer Finding the largest clique in a graph ------------------------------------- Given a graph G, a clique C is a fully connected subgraph in G. The problem of finding the largest clique in a any given graph is known to be NP. Moreover, finding an "approximation" for the clique is known to be NP. Despite this negative result, finding the largest clique in a graph is important (e.g. to find good hamming codes), and for some graphs, it may be possible to achieve good approximations. Several algorithms will be described, including an algorithm that has a provable lower bound on the size of the clique it produces (log^2 N).
Date of last update: October 19, 1994.