Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

The least weight subsequence (LWS) problem is introduced, and is shown to be equivalent to the classic minimum path problem for directed graphs. A special case of the LWS problem is shown to be solvable in O(n log n) time generally and, for certain weight functions, in linear time. A number of applications are given, including an optimum paragraph formation problem and the problem of finding a minimum height B-tree, whose solutions realize improvement in asymptotic time complexity.