Talk:Dijkstra's algorithm

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Latest comment: 7 years ago by Alexey Muranov in topic Is the algorithm description incorrect?

Terminological Dissonance?

The terminology in the caption for the animation is not in full agreement with the description of the algorithm: (a) the algorithm description does not mention a "tentative set" - it does mention "tentative distances", and it mentions an "unvisited set"; (b) the algorithm description mentions no "heuristic", but the caption to the animation says that the algorithm uses a "heuristic that is identically zero". At first it seemed to me that the caption of the animation intended "tentative set" to mean that which is meant by "unvisited set" in the algorithm description, but as I thought about it, I am unsure; on the other hand, it seems clear to me that even if that is not the intent of the caption, it does follow that the "tentative set" is identical to the "unvisited set" in that example. Matt Insall 13:15, 5 August 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Espresso-hound (talkcontribs)

Pronunciation of the inventor's name

Could we add the correct phonetical expression for the inventors name? Anyone researching for this topic will have trouble to pronounce the name correctly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8109:80C0:7EC:E8F6:F2B8:8896:A526 (talk) 10:33, 22 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Description: "Pencil arrows" vs. "parents"

A paragraph in the Description advises "in pencil, mark the road with an arrow pointing to the relabeled intersection." The next paragraph talks about a visited node's "parent." I think these are talking about the same thing, but it's not very clear. Perhaps better wording might be "by following the nodes' parents (that is, traversing the arrows backward)", or perhaps in the first paragraph, "mark the road with an arrow pointing to the relabeled intersection (from 'parent' to 'child')" --Jackrepenning (talk) 18:54, 24 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

Complexity with Fibonacci heaps

A few users have been changing the complexity with Fibonacci heaps from   to   without any justification. The former appears to be correct based on the reasoning in the article:

For any implementation of the vertex set Q, the running time is in
 ,
where   and   are the complexities of the decrease-key and extract-minimum operations in Q, respectively.

since   for Fibonacci heaps. Hence I am reverting the complexity with Fibonacci heaps back to  . -- Paddu (talk) 15:44, 27 December 2017 (UTC)Reply

Is the algorithm description incorrect?

Step six of the algorithm section is:

"6. Otherwise, select the unvisited node that is marked with the smallest tentative distance, set it as the new "current node", and go back to step 3."

I don't believe that's correct. Shouldn't the "tentative" be removed? Since this is an important article I wanted to be sure I was correct before editing it, but if it is incorrect we've already hit citogenesis.

Botlord (talk) 06:04, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

It is the smallest among all the "tentative distances". While it is true that for the node with the smallest one, it is also the real distance, it is probably not so for the others, and even for that one it requires a proof, which will only be given after the algorithm has been described. --Alexey Muranov (talk) 06:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)Reply