Related papers: Submodularity on a tree: Unifying $L^\natural$-con…
Submodularity is one of the most well-studied properties of problem classes in combinatorial optimization and many applications of machine learning and data mining, with strong implications for guaranteed optimization. In this thesis, we…
Given a separation oracle $\mathsf{SO}$ for a convex function $f$ defined on $\mathbb{R}^n$ that has an integral minimizer inside a box with radius $R$, we show how to find an exact minimizer of $f$ using at most (a) $O(n (n \log \log…
The paper considers the minimization of a separable convex function subject to linear ascending constraints. The problem arises as the core optimization in several resource allocation scenarios, and is a special case of an optimization of a…
A number of discrete and continuous optimization problems in machine learning are related to convex minimization problems under submodular constraints. In this paper, we deal with a submodular function with a directed graph structure, and…
Inspired by regularization techniques in statistics and machine learning, we study complementary composite minimization in the stochastic setting. This problem corresponds to the minimization of the sum of a (weakly) smooth function endowed…
We study monotone submodular maximization under general matroid constraints in the online setting. We prove that online optimization of a large class of submodular functions, namely, weighted threshold potential functions, reduces to online…
We study the problem of minimizing a multivariate polynomial function over the unit hypercube. By representing the polynomial through a hypergraph and exploiting its sparsity structure, we establish a new sufficient condition under which…
The notion of ordinal concavity of utility functions has recently been considered by Hafalir, Kojima, Yenmez, and Yokote in economics while there exist earlier related works in discrete optimization and operations research. In the present…
We study a general class of convex submodular optimization problems with indicator variables. Many applications such as the problem of inferring Markov random fields (MRFs) with a sparsity or robustness prior can be naturally modeled in…
We introduce a globally-convergent algorithm for optimizing the tree-reweighted (TRW) variational objective over the marginal polytope. The algorithm is based on the conditional gradient method (Frank-Wolfe) and moves pseudomarginals within…
Bounds on the log partition function are important in a variety of contexts, including approximate inference, model fitting, decision theory, and large deviations analysis. We introduce a new class of upper bounds on the log partition…
In this paper, we introduce a novel technique for constrained submodular maximization, inspired by barrier functions in continuous optimization. This connection not only improves the running time for constrained submodular maximization but…
In this note we observe that for constrained convex minimization problems $\min_{x \in P}f(x)$ over a polytope $P$, dual prices for the linear program $\min_{z \in P} \nabla f(x) z$ obtained from linearization at approximately optimal…
We present an algorithm that enumerates all the minimal triangulations of a graph in incremental polynomial time. Consequently, we get an algorithm for enumerating all the proper tree decompositions, in incremental polynomial time, where…
Submodular optimization has received significant attention in both practice and theory, as a wide array of problems in machine learning, auction theory, and combinatorial optimization have submodular structure. In practice, these problems…
Multimodular functions, primarily used in the literature of queueing theory, discrete-event systems, and operations research, constitute a fundamental function class in discrete convex analysis. The objective of this paper is to clarify the…
The automaton constrained tree knapsack problem is a variant of the knapsack problem in which the items are associated with the vertices of the tree, and we can select a subset of items that is accepted by a top-down tree automaton. If the…
Any function can be constructed using a hierarchy of simpler functions through compositions. Such a hierarchy can be characterized by a binary rooted tree. Each node of this tree is associated with a function which takes as inputs two…
Let $N$ be a finite set of cardinality $n$, and $a\in N$. A submodular function $f$ on $N$ with $f(a)=1$ is defined to be $a$-reduced if, for any decomposition $f=g+h$ into submodular functions where $h$ does not depend on $a$, it follows…
We study the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function with viability constraints. This problem originates from computational biology, where we are given a phylogenetic tree over a set of species and a directed graph, the…