Lee and Meeks recently demonstrated that improved inference for areal unit count data can be achieved by carrying out modifications to a graph representing spatial correlations; specifically, they delete edges of the planar graph derived from border-sharing between geographic regions in order to maximise a specific objective function. In this paper we address the computational complexity of the associated graph optimisation problem, demonstrating that it cannot be solved in polynomial time unless P = NP  .
Lee , Meeks and Pettersson recently demonstrated that improved inference for areal unit count data can be achieved by carrying out modifications to a graph representing spatial correlations; specifically, they delete edges of the planar graph derived from border-sharing between geographic regions in order to maximise a specific objective function. In this paper we address the computational complexity of the associated graph optimisation problem, demonstrating that it cannot be solved in polynomial time unless P = NP ; we further show intractability for a related but simpler problem .
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and Meeks
, Meeks and Pettersson
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; we further show intractability for a related but simpler problem