Approximate search strategies for weighted trees

Abstract: The problems of (classical) searching and connected searching of weighted trees are known to be computationally hard. In this work we give a polynomial-time 3-approximation algorithm that finds a connected search strategy of a given weighted tree. This in particular yields constant factor approximation algorithms for the (non-connected) classical searching problems and for the weighted pathwidth problem for this class of graphs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]