Analyzed algorithmic efficiency of three approaches to solving the Minimum Vertex Cover for undirected graphs of various sizes. For a comprehensive breakdown of this experiment, please refer to "Vertex_Cover_Report.pdf" within this repository.

Undirected Graph: a set of objects (called vertices or nodes) that are connected together, where all the edges are bidirectional.

Vertice: the fundamental unit by which graphs are formed.

Edge: a bidirectional line which connects an unordered pair of vertices together.

Minimum Vertex Cover: the smallest possible subset of vertices of an undirected graph such that every edge in the graph has at least one endpoint in the vertex cover.

Note: encoding provided by the University of Waterloo, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Reza Babaee/Arie Gurfinkel

Clone the MiniSAT repository into the top level directory of the project using:

git clone https://github.com/agurfinkel/minisat.git

Install CMake:

sudo apt install cmake

To initiate the build sequence from scratch, use:

$ cd Vertex_Cover_Analysis && mkdir build && cd build && cmake ../ && make

To run the program:

$ cd Vertex_Cover_Analysis/build/
./analysis

To specify the maximum number of vertices in the graph:

V 10

To specify the edge list for the graph:

E {<1,2>,<7,1>,<3,6>,<4,6>,<0,7>,<2,8>,<0,9>,<5,4>,<8,4>,<2,4>,<3,4>,<0,6>,<4,1>,<9,1>,<6,5>}

Number of Vertices = 5
Edge List =  {<0,4>,<4,1>,<0,3>,<3,4>,<3,2>,<1,3>}
Minimum Vertex Cover = 3 4

Graphical Representation:

Note: graphed using VisualGO: https://visualgo.net/en/mvc

Input:

V 10
E {<1,2>,<7,1>,<3,6>,<4,6>,<0,7>,<2,8>,<0,9>,<5,4>,<8,4>,<2,4>,<3,4>,<0,6>,<4,1>,<9,1>,<6,5>}

Output:

Vertex Cover for CNF-SAT-VC: 2,4,6,7,9
Vertex Cover for APPROX-VC-1: 0,1,2,4,6
Vertex Cover for APPROX-VC-2: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7

CNF-SAT-VC Runtime: 46646.3 microseconds
APPROX-VC-1 Runtime: 139.341 microseconds
APPROX-VC-2 Runtime: 112.531 microseconds

Approximation Ratio for APPROX-VC-1:  1.00
Approximation Ratio for APPROX-VC-2:  1.60