An Approximation Algorithm for the Matrix Tree Multiplication Problem

We consider the Matrix Tree Multiplication problem. This problem is a generalization of the classic Matrix Chain Multiplication problem covered in the dynamic programming chapter of many introductory algorithms textbooks. An instance of the Matrix Tree Multiplication problem consists of a rooted tree with a matrix associated with each edge. The output is, for each leaf in the tree, the product of the matrices on the chain/path from the root to that leaf. Matrix multiplications that are shared between various chains need only be computed once, potentially being shared between different root to leaf chains. Algorithms are evaluated by the number of scalar multiplications performed. Our main result is a linear time algorithm for which the number of scalar multiplications performed is at most 15 times the optimal number of scalar multiplications.