{"paper":{"title":"Approximate Tree Completion and Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Metric Minimum Spanning Trees","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.DM","cs.LG"],"primary_cat":"cs.DS","authors_text":"Benjamin W. Priest, Geoffrey Sanders, Keita Iwabuchi, Nate Veldt, Thomas Stanley, Trevor Steil, T.S. Jayram","submitted_at":"2025-02-18T16:13:46Z","abstract_excerpt":"Finding a minimum spanning tree (MST) for $n$ points in an arbitrary metric space is a fundamental primitive for hierarchical clustering and many other ML tasks, but this takes $\\Omega(n^2)$ time to even approximate. We introduce a framework for metric MSTs that first (1) finds a forest of disconnected components using practical heuristics, and then (2) finds a small weight set of edges to connect disjoint components of the forest into a spanning tree. We prove that optimally solving the second step still takes $\\Omega(n^2)$ time, but we provide a subquadratic 2.62-approximation algorithm. In "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2502.12993","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2502.12993/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}