In the context of Dijkstra's algorithm, what does 'tentative distance' refer to?
Practice Questions
Q1
In the context of Dijkstra's algorithm, what does 'tentative distance' refer to?
The final distance to the destination
The distance calculated from the source to a node
The distance to the nearest neighbor
The distance that has been confirmed
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
In the context of Dijkstra's algorithm, what does 'tentative distance' refer to?
Step 1: Understand that Dijkstra's algorithm is used to find the shortest path from a starting point (source) to other points (nodes) in a graph.
Step 2: When the algorithm starts, it sets the distance to the source node as 0 and all other nodes as infinity (meaning they are unreachable at first).
Step 3: As the algorithm explores the graph, it calculates the distance to each node from the source. This calculated distance is called the 'tentative distance'.
Step 4: If a shorter path to a node is found, the tentative distance for that node is updated to reflect the new, shorter distance.
Step 5: The process continues until the shortest path to all nodes is determined.
