Sets of double and triple weights of trees

TL;DR

This paper characterizes sets of pairwise and triple weights that can be realized by weighted trees, providing new conditions and a modified algorithm for tree reconstruction from distance data.

Contribution

It introduces new characterizations for double and triple weights of trees and proposes a modified Neighbour-Joining algorithm for reconstructing trees from distance data.

Findings

New necessary and sufficient conditions for double weights

Characterization of triple weights of trees

Modified Neighbour-Joining algorithm for tree reconstruction

Abstract

Let T be a weighted tree with n leaves. Let D_{i,j} be the distance between the leaves i and j. Let D_{i,j,k}= (D_{i,j} + D_{j,k} +D_{i,k})/2. We will call such numbers "triple weights" of the tree. In this paper, we give a characterization, different from the previous ones, for sets indexed by 2-subsets of a $n$-set to be double weights of a tree. By using the same ideas,we find also necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of real numbers indexed by 3-subsets of an $n$-set to be the set of the triple weights of a tree with $n$ leaves. Besides we propose a slight modification of Saitou-Nei's Neighbour-Joining algorithm to reconstruct trees from the data D_{i,j}.