Related papers: Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Decision Tree…
The Steiner tree problem is one of the classic and most fundamental $\mathcal{NP}$-hard problems: given an arbitrary weighted graph, seek a minimum-cost tree spanning a given subset of the vertices (terminals). Byrka \emph{et al}. proposed…
Given two sets of points in the plane, $P$ of $n$ terminals and $S$ of $m$ Steiner points, a Steiner tree of $P$ is a tree spanning all points of $P$ and some (or none or all) points of $S$. A Steiner tree with length of longest edge…
This paper studies a fundamental algorithmic problem related to the design of demand-aware networks: networks whose topologies adjust toward the traffic patterns they serve, in an online manner. The goal is to strike a tradeoff between the…
During the last decade, sampling-based path planning algorithms, such as Probabilistic RoadMaps (PRM) and Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT), have been shown to work well in practice and possess theoretical guarantees such as…
Sparse decision trees are one of the most common forms of interpretable models. While recent advances have produced algorithms that fully optimize sparse decision trees for prediction, that work does not address policy design, because the…
In the laminar-constrained spanning tree problem, the goal is to find a minimum-cost spanning tree which respects upper bounds on the number of times each cut in a given laminar family is crossed. This generalizes the well-studied…
The general problem of robust optimization is this: one of several possible scenarios will appear tomorrow, but things are more expensive tomorrow than they are today. What should you anticipatorily buy today, so that the worst-case cost…
We consider the ``minimum degree spanning tree'' problem. As input, we receive an undirected, connected graph $G=(V, E)$ with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges, and our task is to find a spanning tree $T$ of $G$ that minimizes $\max_{u \in V}…
We consider the Steiner tree problem on graphs where we are given a set of nodes and the goal is to find a tree sub-graph of minimum weight that contains all nodes in the given set, potentially including additional nodes. This is a…
We consider a class of multi-stage robust covering problems, where additional information is revealed about the problem instance in each stage, but the cost of taking actions increases. The dilemma for the decision-maker is whether to wait…
Finding an optimal assignment between two sets of objects is a fundamental problem arising in many applications, including the matching of `bag-of-words' representations in natural language processing and computer vision. Solving the…
The Metric Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a classical NP-hard optimization problem. The double-tree shortcutting method for Metric TSP yields an exponentially-sized space of TSP tours, each of which approximates the optimal solution…
We describe an algorithm that takes as input n points in the plane and a parameter {\epsilon}, and produces as output an embedded planar graph having the given points as a subset of its vertices in which the graph distances are a (1 +…
We give approximation schemes for Subset TSP and Steiner Tree on unit disk graphs, and more generally, on intersection graphs of similarly sized connected fat (not necessarily convex) polygons in the plane. As a first step towards this…
We present four novel approximation algorithms for finding triangulation of minimum treewidth. Two of the algorithms improve on the running times of algorithms by Robertson and Seymour, and Becker and Geiger that approximate the optimum by…
We investigate the problem of best-policy identification in discounted Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) when the learner has access to a generative model. The objective is to devise a learning algorithm returning the best policy as early as…
Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree (PCST) is a generalization of the Steiner Tree problem, a fundamental problem in computer science. In the classic Steiner Tree problem, we aim to connect a set of vertices known as terminals using the…
What is the effectiveness of local search algorithms for geometric problems in the plane? We prove that local search with neighborhoods of magnitude $1/\epsilon^c$ is an approximation scheme for the following problems in the Euclidian…
Several classical adaptive optimization algorithms, such as line search and trust region methods, have been recently extended to stochastic settings where function values, gradients, and Hessians in some cases, are estimated via stochastic…
With applications to many disciplines, the traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a classical computer science optimization problem with applications to industrial engineering, theoretical computer science, bioinformatics, and several other…