Related papers: A note on Johnson, Minkoff and Phillips' algorithm…
Weighted flow time is a fundamental and very well-studied objective function in scheduling. In this paper, we study the setting of a single machine with preemptions. The input consists of a set of jobs, characterized by their processing…
A promising approach for obtaining improved approximation algorithms for Steiner tree is to use the bidirected cut relaxation (BCR). The integrality gap of this relaxation is at least $36/31$, and it has long been conjectured that its true…
The ancestral maximum-likelihood and phylogeography problems are two fundamental problems involving evolutionary studies. The ancestral maximum-likelihood problem involves identifying a rooted tree alongside internal node sequences that…
We combine the work of Garg and Konemann, and Fleischer with ideas from dynamic graph algorithms to obtain faster (1-eps)-approximation schemes for various versions of the multicommodity flow problem. In particular, if eps is moderately…
In this paper we investigate the convergence behavior of a primal-dual splitting method for solving monotone inclusions involving mixtures of composite, Lipschitzian and parallel sum type operators proposed by Combettes and Pesquet in [7].…
In this paper we consider variational problems involving 1-dimensional connected sets in the Euclidean plane, such as the classical Steiner tree problem and the irrigation (Gilbert-Steiner) problem. We relate them to optimal partition…
This is a survey paper on Poisson approximation using Stein's method of exchangeable pairs. We illustrate using Poisson-binomial trials and many variations on three classical problems of combinatorial probability: the matching problem, the…
Assuming Zipf's Law to be accurate, we show that existing techniques for partially optimizing binary trees produce results that are approximately 10% worse than true optimal. We present a new approximate optimization technique that runs in…
We consider the precedence-constrained scheduling problem to minimize the total weighted completion time. For a single machine several $2$-approximation algorithms are known, which are based on linear programming and network flows. We show…
This paper concerns proving almost tight (super-polynomial) running times, for achieving desired approximation ratios for various problems. To illustrate, the question we study, let us consider the Set-Cover problem with n elements and m…
This work is concerned with the efficient optimization method for solving a large class of optimal mass transport problems. An inexact primal-dual algorithm is presented from the time discretization of a proper dynamical system, and by…
In the Directed Steiner Tree (DST) problem we are given an $n$-vertex directed edge-weighted graph, a root $r$, and a collection of $k$ terminal nodes. Our goal is to find a minimum-cost arborescence that contains a directed path from $r$…
It is known that a better than $2$-approximation algorithm for the girth in dense directed unweighted graphs needs $n^{3-o(1)}$ time unless one uses fast matrix multiplication. Meanwhile, the best known approximation factor for a…
We give an algorithm that takes as input an $n$-vertex graph $G$ and an integer $k$, runs in time $2^{O(k^2)} n^{O(1)}$, and outputs a tree decomposition of $G$ of width at most $k$, if such a decomposition exists. This resolves the…
Proximal splitting algorithms are well suited to solving large-scale nonsmooth optimization problems, in particular those arising in machine learning. We propose a new primal-dual algorithm, in which the dual update is randomized;…
We design and analyse approximation algorithms for the minimum-cost connected T-join problem: given an undirected graph G = (V;E) with nonnegative costs on the edges, and a subset of nodes T, find (if it exists) a spanning connected…
We study two problems that seek a subtree $T$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ such that $T$ satisfies a certain property and has minimal maximum degree. - In the Min-Degree Group Steiner Tree problem we are given a collection ${\cal S}$ of groups…
The $Aldous\text{-}Broder$ and $Wilson$ are two well-known algorithms to generate uniform spanning trees (USTs) based on random walks. This work studies their relationship while they construct random trees with the goal of reducing the…
We prove the following result about approximating the maximum independent set in a graph. Informally, we show that any approximation algorithm with a ``non-trivial'' approximation ratio (as a function of the number of vertices of the input…
We extend a primal-dual fixed point algorithm (PDFP) proposed in [5] to solve two kinds of separable multi-block minimization problems, arising in signal processing and imaging science. This work shows the flexibility of applying PDFP…