Related papers: Combinatorics of the change-making problem
We define and study greedy matchings in vertex-ordered bipartite graphs. It is shown that each vertex-ordered bipartite graph has a unique greedy matching. The proof uses (a weak form of) Newman's lemma. The vertex ordering is called a…
This article develops a new theoretical basis for decomposing signals that are formed by the linear superposition of a finite number of modes. Each mode depends nonlinearly upon several parameters; we seek both these parameters and the…
We consider robust combinatorial optimization problems with cost uncertainty where the decision maker can prepare K solutions beforehand and chooses the best of them once the true cost is revealed. Also known as min-max-min robustness (a…
The coalition structure formation problem represents an active research area in multi-agent systems. A coalition structure is defined as a partition of the agents involved in a system into disjoint coalitions. The problem of finding the…
Collective communications are ubiquitous in parallel applications. We present two new algorithms for performing a reduction. The operation associated with our reduction needs to be associative and commutative. The two algorithms are…
Consider the Hitting Set problem where, for a given universe $\mathcal{X} = \left\{ 1, ... , n \right\}$ and a collection of subsets $\mathcal{S}_1, ... , \mathcal{S}_m$, one seeks to identify the smallest subset of $\mathcal{X}$ which has…
We consider the problem of studying the performance of greedy algorithm on sensor selection problem for stable linear systems with Kalman Filter. Specifically, the objective is to find the system parameters that affects the performance of…
In this article, we present a family of numerical approaches to solve high-dimensional linear non-symmetric problems. The principle of these methods is to approximate a function which depends on a large number of variates by a sum of tensor…
We present SimultaneousGreedys, a deterministic algorithm for constrained submodular maximization. At a high level, the algorithm maintains $\ell$ solutions and greedily updates them in a simultaneous fashion. SimultaneousGreedys achieves…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
Sets of $d\times d$ matrices sharing a common invariant cone enjoy special properties, which are widely used in applications. However, finding this cone or even proving its existence/non-existence is hard. This problem is known to be…
We revisit the coalition structure generation problem in which the goal is to partition the players into exhaustive and disjoint coalitions so as to maximize the social welfare. One of our key results is a general polynomial-time algorithm…
In many machine learning applications, one needs to interactively select a sequence of items (e.g., recommending movies based on a user's feedback) or make sequential decisions in a certain order (e.g., guiding an agent through a series of…
This paper proposes a greedy algorithm named as Big step greedy set cover algorithm to compute approximate minimum set cover. The Big step greedy algorithm, in each step selects p sets such that the union of selected p sets contains…
The greedy algorithm adapted from Kruskal's algorithm is an efficient and folklore way to produce a $k$-spanner with girth at least $k+2$. The greedy algorithm has shown to be `existentially optimal', while it's not `universally optimal'…
The problem of optimally placing sensors under a cost constraint arises naturally in the design of industrial and commercial products, as well as in scientific experiments. We consider a relaxation of the full optimization formulation of…
This paper proposes a framework that formulates a wide range of graph combinatorial optimization problems using permutation-based representations. These problems include the travelling salesman problem, maximum independent set, maximum cut,…
The optimization of expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions over combinatorial structures is an ubiquitous task in machine learning, engineering and the natural sciences. The combinatorial explosion of the search space and costly…
We study the problem of optimally projecting the transition matrix of a finite ergodic multivariate Markov chain onto a lower-dimensional state space, as well as the problem of finding an optimal partition of coordinates such that the…
Given a dollar, how many ways are there to make change using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters? What if you are given a different amount of money? What if you use different coin denominations? This is a well known problem and formulas…