Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

Approximating Edit Distance Within Constant Factor in Truly Sub-Quadratic Time

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2018

Abstract

Edit distance is a measure of similarity of two strings based on the minimum number of character insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to transform one string into the other. The edit distance can be computed exactly using a dynamic programming algorithm that runs in quadratic time.

Andoni, Krauthgamer and Onak (2010) gave a nearly linear time algorithm that approximates edit distance within approximation factor poly(log n). In this paper, we provide an algorithm with running time (O) over tilde (n(2-2/7)) that approximates the edit distance within a constant factor.