2007/11/12 by Jinshan Zhang, Zhang, Jinshan, Yan Huo +3
Computer Science · Mathematics · #Complexity and Algorithms in Graphs #Computational Complexity (cs.CC) #Discrete Mathematics (cs.DM) #F.2.2 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #G.2.1 #Markov Chains and Monte Carlo Methods #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0711.1723
openalex publication_date 2007/11/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Counting the number of all the matchings on a bipartite graph has been transformed into calculating the permanent of a matrix obtained from the extended bipartite graph by Yan Huo, and Rasmussen presents a simple approach (RM) to approximate the permanent, which just yields a critical ratio O(nω(n)) for almost all the 0-1 matrices, provided it's a simple promising practical way to compute this #P-complete problem. In this paper, the performance of this method will be shown when it's applied to compute all the matchings based on that transformation. The critical ratio will be proved to be very large with a certain probability, owning an increasing factor larger than any polynomial of n even in the sense for almost all the 0-1 matrices. Hence, RM fails to work well when counting all the matchings via computing the permanent of the matrix. In other words, we must carefully utilize the known methods of estimating the permanent to count all the matchings through that transformation.