Limit theory for the random on-line nearest-neighbor graph

Mathew D. Penrose and Andrew R. Wade

Random Structures and Algorithms, 32, no. 2, March 2008, 125–156. DOI: 10.1002/rsa.20185.

Abstract

In the on-line nearest-neighbour graph (ONG), each point after the first in a sequence of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is joined by an edge to its nearest-neighbour amongst those points that precede it in the sequence. We study the large-sample asymptotic behaviour of the total power-weighted length of the ONG on uniform random points in $(0,1)^d$. In particular, for $d=1$ and weight exponent $\alpha >1/2$, the limiting distribution of the centred total weight is characterized by a distributional fixed-point equation. As an ancillary result, we give exact expressions for the expectation and variance of the standard nearest-neighbour (directed) graph on uniform random points in the unit interval.