Uri Zwick
The input to the Multiway Cut problem is a weighted undirected graph, with nonnegative edge weights, and $k$ designated terminals. The goal is to partition the vertices of the graph into $k$ parts, each containing exactly one of the…
The MAX BISECTION problem seeks a maximum-size cut that evenly divides the vertices of a given undirected graph. An open problem raised by Austrin, Benabbas, and Georgiou is whether MAX BISECTION can be approximated as well as MAX CUT,…
We consider the problem of computing optimal search trees on trees (STTs). STTs generalize binary search trees (BSTs) in which we search nodes in a path (linear order) to search trees that facilitate search over general tree topologies.…
Let $G = (V,E,\ell)$ be a $n$-node $m$-edge weighted undirected graph, where $\ell: E \rightarrow (0,\infty)$ is a real \emph{length} function defined on its edges, and let $g$ denote the girth of $G$, i.e., the length of its shortest…
We present a randomized $\tilde{O}(n^{3.5})$-time algorithm for computing \emph{optimal energetic paths} for an electric car between all pairs of vertices in an $n$-vertex directed graph with positive and negative \emph{costs}. The optimal…
Let $G=(V,E,w)$ be a weighted directed graph without negative cycles. For two vertices $s,t\in V$, we let $d_{\le h}(s,t)$ be the minimum, according to the weight function $w$, of a path from $s$ to $t$ that uses at most $h$ edges, or hops.…
MAX NAE-SAT is a natural optimization problem, closely related to its better-known relative MAX SAT. The approximability status of MAX NAE-SAT is almost completely understood if all clauses have the same size $k$, for some $k\ge 2$. We…
An electric car equipped with a battery of a finite capacity travels on a road network with an infrastructure of charging stations. Each charging station has a possibly different cost per unit of energy. Traversing a given road segment…
Austrin showed that the approximation ratio $\beta\approx 0.94016567$ obtained by the MAX 2-SAT approximation algorithm of Lewin, Livnat and Zwick (LLZ) is optimal modulo the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC) and modulo a Simplicity Conjecture…
A weighted directed graph $G=(V,A,c)$, where $A\subseteq V\times V$ and $c:A\to R$, describes a road network in which an electric car can roam. An arc $uv$ models a road segment connecting the two vertices $u$ and $v$. The cost $c(uv)$ of…
A \emph{resizable array} is an array that can \emph{grow} and \emph{shrink} by the addition or removal of items from its end, or both its ends, while still supporting constant-time \emph{access} to each item stored in the array given its…
Assuming the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), the best approximation ratio that can be obtained in polynomial time for the MAX CUT problem is $\alpha_{\text{CUT}}\simeq 0.87856$, obtained by the celebrated SDP-based approximation algorithm of…
We survey three algorithms that use depth-first search to find the strong components of a directed graph in linear time: (1) Tarjan's algorithm; (2) a cycle-finding algorithm; and (3) a bidirectional search algorithm.
Each vertex of an arbitrary simple graph on $n$ vertices chooses $k$ random incident edges. What is the expected number of edges in the original graph that connect different connected components of the sampled subgraph? We prove that the…
We revisit multipass pairing heaps and path-balanced binary search trees (BSTs), two classical algorithms for data structure maintenance. The pairing heap is a simple and efficient "self-adjusting" heap, introduced in 1986 by Fredman,…
The pairing heap is a classical heap data structure introduced in 1986 by Fredman, Sedgewick, Sleator, and Tarjan. It is remarkable both for its simplicity and for its excellent performance in practice. The "magic" of pairing heaps lies in…
We use soft heaps to obtain simpler optimal algorithms for selecting the $k$-th smallest item, and the set of~$k$ smallest items, from a heap-ordered tree, from a collection of sorted lists, and from $X+Y$, where $X$ and $Y$ are two…
We obtain the following new coloring results: * A 3-colorable graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree~$\Delta$ can be colored, in polynomial time, using $O((\Delta \log\Delta)^{1/3} \cdot\log{n})$ colors. This slightly improves an…
We introduce the hollow heap, a very simple data structure with the same amortized efficiency as the classical Fibonacci heap. All heap operations except delete and delete-min take $O(1)$ time, worst case as well as amortized; delete and…
In Friedmann, Hansen, and Zwick (2011) we claimed that the expected number of pivoting steps performed by the Random-Facet algorithm of Kalai and of Matousek, Sharir, and Welzl is equal to the expected number of pivoting steps performed by…