# Approximating the Permanent

@article{Jerrum1989ApproximatingTP,
title={Approximating the Permanent},
author={Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair},
journal={SIAM J. Comput.},
year={1989},
volume={18},
pages={1149-1178}
}
• Published 1 December 1989
• Mathematics
• SIAM J. Comput.
A randomised approximation scheme for the permanent of a 0–1s presented. The task of estimating a permanent is reduced to that of almost uniformly generating perfect matchings in a graph; the latter is accomplished by simulating a Markov chain whose states are the matchings in the graph. For a wide class of 0–1 matrices the approximation scheme is fully-polynomial, i.e., runs in time polynomial in the size of the matrix and a parameter that controls the accuracy of the output. This class…
799 Citations

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