Hungarian Algorithm for Assignment Problem | Set 1 (Introduction) - G... https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/hungarian-algorithm-assignment-problem...

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Hungarian Algorithm for Assignment

Problem | Set 1 (Introduction)
Difficulty Level : Hard ● Last Updated : 04 Mar, 2020

Let there be n agents and n tasks. Any agent can be assigned to perform
any task, incurring some cost that may vary depending on the agent-task
assignment. It is required to perform all tasks by assigning exactly one
agent to each task and exactly one task to each agent in such a way that
the total cost of the assignment is minimized.

Example: You work as a manager for a chip manufacturer, and you

currently have 3 people on the road meeting clients. Your salespeople are
in Jaipur, Pune and Bangalore, and you want them to fly to three other
cities: Delhi, Mumbai and Kerala. The table below shows the cost of
airline tickets in INR between the cities:

The question: where would you send each of your salespeople in order to
minimize fair?

Possible
We use assignment:
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you have the best = 11000
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Other Possible assignment: Cost = 9500 INR and this is the best of the 3!
possible assignments.

Brute force solution is to consider every possible assignment implies a

complexity of Ω(n!).

The Hungarian algorithm, aka Munkres assignment algorithm, utilizes

the following theorem for polynomial runtime complexity (worst case
O(n3)) and guaranteed optimality:
If a number is added to or subtracted from all of the entries of any one
row or column of a cost matrix, then an optimal assignment for the
resulting cost matrix is also an optimal assignment for the original cost
matrix.

We reduce our original weight matrix to contain zeros, by using the above
theorem. We try to assign tasks to agents such that each agent is doing
only one task and the penalty incurred in each case is zero.

Core of the algorithm (assuming square matrix):

1. For each row of the matrix, find the smallest element and subtract it
from every element in its row.
2. Do the same (as step 1) for all columns.
3. Cover all zeros in the matrix using minimum number of horizontal and
vertical lines.
4. Test for Optimality: If the minimum number of covering lines is n, an
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optimal assignment
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lesser than n, we haven’t found

Gotthe
It ! optimal assignment, and must
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proceed to step 5.
5. Determine the smallest entry not covered by any line. Subtract this
entry from each uncovered row, and then add it to each covered
column. Return to step 3.

Explanation for above simple example:

Below is the cost matrix of example given in above diagrams.

2500 4000 3500
4000 6000 3500
2000 4000 2500

Step 1: Subtract minimum of every row.

2500, 3500 and 2000 are subtracted from rows 1, 2 and
3 respectively.

0 1500 1000
500 2500 0
0 2000 500

Step 2: Subtract minimum of every column.

0, 1500 and 0 are subtracted from columns 1, 2 and 3
respectively.

0 0 1000
500 1000 0
0 500 500

Step 3: Cover all zeroes with minimum number of

horizontal and vertical lines.

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Step 4: Since we need 3 lines to cover all zeroes,

we have found the optimal assignment.
2500 4000 3500
4000 6000 3500
2000 4000 2500

So the optimal cost is 4000 + 3500 + 2000 = 9500

An example that doesn’t lead to optimal value in first attempt:

In the above example, the first check for optimality did give us solution.
What if we the number covering lines is less than n.

cost matrix:
1500 4000 4500
2000 6000 3500
2000 4000 2500

Step 1: Subtract minimum of every row.

1500, 2000 and 2000 are subtracted from rows 1, 2 and
3 respectively.

0 2500 3000
0 4000 1500
0 2000 500

Step 2: Subtract minimum of every column.

0, 2000 and 500 are subtracted from columns 1, 2 and 3
respectively.

0 500 2500
0 2000 1000
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Step 3: Cover all zeroes with minimum number of

horizontal and vertical lines.

Step 4: Since we only need 2 lines to cover all zeroes,

we have NOT found the optimal assignment.

Step 5: We subtract the smallest uncovered entry

from all uncovered rows. Smallest entry is 500.
-500 0 2000
-500 1500 500
0 0 0

Then we add the smallest entry to all covered columns, we get

0 0 2000
0 1500 500
500 0 0

Now we return to Step 3:. Here we cover again using

lines. and go to Step 4:. Since we need 3 lines to
cover, we found the optimal solution.
1500 4000 4500
2000 6000 3500
2000 4000 2500

So the optimal cost is 4000 + 2000 + 2500 = 8500

In the next post, we will be discussing implementation of the above

algorithm. The implementation requires more steps as we need to find
minimum number of lines to cover all 0’s using a program.
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http://www.math.harvard.edu/archive/20_spring_05/handouts
/assignment_overheads.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQDZNHwuuOY

This article is contributed by Yash Varyani. Please write comments if you

find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the
topic discussed above.

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R ECO M M E N D E D A RT I C L E S Page : 1 2 3

01 Hungarian Algorithm for

Assignment Problem | Set 2
05 K Centers Problem | Set 1
(Greedy Approximate
(Implementation) Algorithm)
20, Jul 21 26, Mar 15

02 Channel Assignment Problem

23, Jun 14 06 Transportation Problem | Set 1
(Introduction)
25, Nov 19

03 Vertex Cover Problem | Set 1

(Introduction and Approximate
Algorithm)
07 Push Relabel Algorithm | Set 1
(Introduction and Illustration)
17, Nov 14 04, Apr 16

04 Transportation Problem | Set 7 (

Degeneracy in Transportation
08 Karger's algorithm for Minimum
Cut | Set 1 (Introduction and
Problem ) Implementation)
03, Dec 19 21, May 15

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