Related papers: Local Search is Better than Random Assignment for …
A sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm is designed for nonsmooth optimization problems with upper-C^2 objective functions. Upper-C^2 functions are locally equivalent to difference-of-convex (DC) functions with smooth convex…
We give a simple deterministic $O(\log K / \log\log K)$ approximation algorithm for the Min-Max Selecting Items problem, where $K$ is the number of scenarios. While our main goal is simplicity, this result also improves over the previous…
Local search is a fundamental method in operations research and combinatorial optimisation. It has been widely applied to a variety of challenging problems, including multi-objective optimisation where multiple, often conflicting,…
We consider the Demand Strip Packing problem (DSP), in which we are given a set of jobs, each specified by a processing time and a demand. The task is to schedule all jobs such that they are finished before some deadline $D$ while…
Local search is a widely-employed strategy for finding good solutions to Traveling Salesman Problem. We analyze the problem of determining whether the weight of a given cycle can be decreased by a popular $k$-opt move. Earlier work has…
Schoening presents a simple randomized algorithm for (d,k)-CSP problems with running time (d(k-1)/k)^n poly(n). Here, d is the number of colors, k is the size of the constraints, and n is the number of variables. A derandomized version of…
We consider the fundamental problem of selecting $k$ out of $n$ random variables in a way that the expected highest or second-highest value is maximized. This question captures several applications where we have uncertainty about the…
We consider an $n$ agents distributed optimization problem with imperfect information characterized in a parametric sense, where the unknown parameter can be solved by a distinct distributed parameter learning problem. Though each agent…
We consider the popular $k$-means problem in $d$-dimensional Euclidean space. Recently Friggstad, Rezapour, Salavatipour [FOCS'16] and Cohen-Addad, Klein, Mathieu [FOCS'16] showed that the standard local search algorithm yields a…
A Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) is a framework used for modeling and solving constrained problems. Tree-search algorithms like backtracking try to construct a solution to a CSP by selecting the variables of the problem one after…
The state of the art in approximation algorithms for facility location problems are complicated combinations of various techniques. In particular, the currently best 1.488-approximation algorithm for the uncapacitated facility location…
We give nearly-tight upper and lower bounds for the improving multi-armed bandits problem. An instance of this problem has $k$ arms, each of whose reward function is a concave and increasing function of the number of times that arm has been…
Afshani, Barbay and Chan (2017) introduced the notion of instance-optimal algorithm in the order-oblivious setting. An algorithm A is instance-optimal in the order-oblivious setting for a certain class of algorithms A* if the following…
Optimization problems involving complex variables, when solved, are typically transformed into real variables, often at the expense of convergence rate and interpretability. This paper introduces a novel formalism for a prominent problem in…
We present an extremely simple polynomial-space exponential-time $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for MAX-k-SAT that is (slightly) faster than the previous known polynomial-space $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithms by Hirsch…
We propose to use local search algorithms to produce SAT instances which are harder to solve than randomly generated k-CNF formulae. The first results, obtained with rudimentary search algorithms, show that the approach deserves further…
In the maximum constraint satisfaction problem (Max CSP), one is given a finite collection of (possibly weighted) constraints on overlapping sets of variables, and the goal is to assign values from a given domain to the variables so as to…
Capacitated fair-range $k$-clustering generalizes classical $k$-clustering by incorporating both capacity constraints and demographic fairness. In this setting, each facility has a capacity limit and may belong to one or more demographic…
We study different online optimization problems in the random-order model. There is a finite set of bins with known capacity and a finite set of items arriving in a random order. Upon arrival of an item, its size and its value for each of…
Given a fixed arity $k \geq 2$, Min-$k$-CSP on complete instances involves a set of $n$ variables $V$ and one nontrivial constraint for every $k$-subset of variables (so there are $\binom{n}{k}$ constraints). The goal is to find an…