A sublinear algorithm for weakly approximating edit distance

We show how to determine whether the edit distance between two given strings is small in sublinear time. Specifically, we present a test which, given two n-character strings A and B, runs in time o(n) and with high probability returns "CLOSE" if their edit distance is O(n ), and "FAR" if their edit distance is (n), where is a fixed parameter less

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: STOC
• Authors: Tugkan Batu, Funda Ergün, Joe Kilian, Avner Magen, Sofya Raskhodnikova, Ronitt Rubinfeld, Rahul Sami
• Keywords: Algorithms, Edit Distance, Fixed Parameter, STOC 2003