R: Solve Linear Sum Assignment Problem

solve_LSAP {clue} | R Documentation

## Solve Linear Sum Assignment Problem

### Description

Solve the linear sum assignment problem using the Hungarian method.

### Usage

    solve_LSAP(x, maximum = FALSE)

### Arguments

`x` | a matrix with nonnegative entries and at least as many columns as rows.
`maximum` | a logical indicating whether to minimize of maximize the sum of assigned costs.

### Details

If nr and nc are the numbers of rows and columns of `x`, `solve_LSAP` finds an optimal assignment of rows to columns, i.e., a one-to-one map `p` of the numbers from 1 to nr to the numbers from 1 to nc (a permutation of these numbers in case `x` is a square matrix) such that ∑_{i=1}^{nr} x[i, p[i]] is minimized or maximized.

This assignment can be found using a linear program (and package lpSolve provides a function `lp.assign` for doing so), but typically more efficiently and provably in polynomial time O(n^3) using primal-dual methods such as the so-called Hungarian method (see the references).

### Value

An object of class `"solve_LSAP"` with the optimal assignment of rows to columns.

### Author(s)

Walter Böhm Walter.Boehm@wu-wien.ac.at kindly provided C code implementing the Hungarian method.

### References

C. Papadimitriou and K. Steiglitz (1982), Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

### Examples

    x <- matrix(c(5, 1, 4, 3, 5, 2, 2, 4, 4), nrow = 3)
    solve_LSAP(x)
    solve_LSAP(x, maximum = TRUE)
    ## To get the optimal value (for now):
    y <- solve_LSAP(x)
    sum(x[cbind(seq_along(y), y)])

[Package clue version 0.3-54 Index]