Question

The _______ process updates the costs of all the vertices \(V\), connected to a vertex \(U\), if we could improve the best estimate of the shortest path to \(V\) by including \((U,V)\) in the path to \(V\).

• A. Relaxation
• B. Improvement
• C. Shortening
• D. Costing

Hint:

Relaxation is a key step in algorithms that find the shortest paths, like Dijkstra's algorithm.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

The relaxation process in algorithms like Dijkstra’s or Bellman-Ford updates the shortest path estimates by checking if a shorter path to a vertex can be found via another vertex. Relaxation ensures that we iteratively improve the shortest path estimates by including edges one by one.