Minimum Spanning Tree

A minimum spanning tree is

• a tree, meaning it has no cycle
• minimum, meaning it has minimum weight
• spanning, meaning it connects all nodes

MST Problem

The MST problem takes a connected graph Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle G} and outputs an MST for that graph.

Greedy Approach

The approach is to try to add the smallest edges as long as they do not create a cycle; add an edge to the tree that is minimum across the cut of Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle T} vs. Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle V - T}