Fulkerson and Gross published an O(mn ~) algorithm for testing an m • n matrix
for the consecutive ones property [8]. This bound can be improved by noticing
that the dominant term is due to the computation of a matrix product. Using the
techniques developed by Strassen [28], the Fulkerson-Gross algorithm can be implemented
to run in O(max{m(l~ 2, mnO~ steps for an m • n (0, 1)-matrix
[3]. Using the reduction algorithm an even better bound can be obtained. The basic
algorithm is the following procedure.