Related papers: On Approximability of Block Sorting
We consider a large family of problems in which an ordering (or, more precisely, a chain of subsets) of a finite set must be chosen to minimize some weighted sum of costs. This family includes variations of Min Sum Set Cover (MSSC), several…
We introduce and study the problem of balanced districting, where given an undirected graph with vertices carrying two types of weights (different population, resource types, etc) the goal is to maximize the total weights covered in vertex…
Strip packing is a classical packing problem, where the goal is to pack a set of rectangular objects into a strip of a given width, while minimizing the total height of the packing. The problem has multiple applications, e.g. in scheduling…
Motivated by group-project distribution, we introduce and study stable matching under the constraint of applicants needing to share a location to be matched with the same institute, which we call the Location-Restricted Stable Matching…
The Graph Pricing problem is among the fundamental problems whose approximability is not well-understood. While there is a simple combinatorial 1/4-approximation algorithm, the best hardness result remains at 1/2 assuming the Unique Games…
Maximum surjective constraint satisfaction problems (Max-Sur-CSPs) are computational problems where we are given a set of variables denoting values from a finite domain B and a set of constraints on the variables. A solution to such a…
Recently, there has been increasing interest and progress in improvising the approximation algorithm for well-known NP-Complete problems, particularly the approximation algorithm for the Vertex-Cover problem. Here we have proposed a…
In this paper, we study a number of well-known combinatorial optimization problems that fit in the following paradigm: the input is a collection of (potentially inconsistent) local relationships between the elements of a ground set (e.g.,…
We consider the robust version of items selection problem, in which the goal is to choose representatives from a family of sets, preserving constraints on the allowed items' combinations. We prove NP-hardness of the deterministic version,…
We consider the Low Rank Approximation problem, where the input consists of a matrix $A \in \mathbb{R}^{n_R \times n_C}$ and an integer $k$, and the goal is to find a matrix $B$ of rank at most $k$ that minimizes $\| A - B \|_0$, which is…
A number of intriguing decision scenarios revolve around partitioning a collection of objects to optimize some application specific objective function. This problem is generally referred to as the Object Partitioning Problem (OPP) and is…
We explore Cluster Editing and its generalization Correlation Clustering with a new operation called permissive vertex splitting which addresses finding overlapping clusters in the face of uncertain information. We determine that both…
We study the token swapping problem, in which we are given a graph with an initial assignment of one distinct token to each vertex, and a final desired assignment (again with one token per vertex). The goal is to find the minimum length…
In this paper we study a max-min $k$-partition problem on a weighted graph, that could model a robust $k$-coalition formation. We settle the computational complexity of this problem as complete for class $\Sigma_2^P$. This hardness holds…
Sparse optimization is a central problem in machine learning and computer vision. However, this problem is inherently NP-hard and thus difficult to solve in general. Combinatorial search methods find the global optimal solution but are…
We study approximation algorithms for several variants of the MaxCover problem, with the focus on algorithms that run in FPT time. In the MaxCover problem we are given a set N of elements, a family S of subsets of N, and an integer K. The…
We study the problem of covering the maximum number of vertices in a graph by a collection of vertex-disjoint stars, each with a number of satellites in a given interval $[k, \ell]$, where $1 \le k < \ell$ and $\ell$ can be infinity. This…
Ensuring fairness in machine learning algorithms is a challenging and essential task. We consider the problem of clustering a set of points while satisfying fairness constraints. While there have been several attempts to capture group…
Optimization problems frequently appear in any scientific domain. Most of the times, the corresponding decision problem turns out to be NP-hard, and in these cases genetic algorithms are often used to obtain approximated solutions. However,…
We present a packing-based approximation algorithm for the $k$-Set Cover problem. We introduce a new local search-based $k$-set packing heuristic, and call it Restricted $k$-Set Packing. We analyze its tight approximation ratio via a…