Related papers: Inapproximability of the Smallest Superpolyomino P…
Let $\cal R$ be a set of $n$ colored imprecise points, where each point is colored by one of $k$ colors. Each imprecise point is specified by a unit disk in which the point lies. We study the problem of computing the smallest and the…
We study the maximization version of the fundamental graph coloring problem. Here the goal is to color the vertices of a k-colorable graph with k colors so that a maximum fraction of edges are properly colored (i.e. their endpoints receive…
NP-complete problems should be hard on some instances but those may be extremely rare. On generic instances many such problems, especially related to random graphs, have been proven easy. We show the intractability of random instances of a…
In this paper we investigate the colorful components framework, motivated by applications emerging from comparative genomics. The general goal is to remove a collection of edges from an undirected vertex-colored graph $G$ such that in the…
We introduce the notions of de Bruijn polyominoes and prismatic polyominoes, which generalize the notions of de Bruijn sequences and arrays. Given a small fixed polyomino $p$ and a set of colors $[n]$, a de Bruijn polyomino for $(p,n)$ is a…
We prove that it is NP-hard to dissect one simple orthogonal polygon into another using a given number of pieces, as is approximating the fewest pieces to within a factor of $1+1/1080-\varepsilon$.
We study a geometric facility location problem under imprecision. Given $n$ unit intervals in the real line, each with one of $k$ colors, the goal is to place one point in each interval such that the resulting \emph{minimum color-spanning…
We show improved NP-hardness of approximating Ordering Constraint Satisfaction Problems (OCSPs). For the two most well-studied OCSPs, Maximum Acyclic Subgraph and Maximum Betweenness, we prove inapproximability of $14/15+\epsilon$ and…
This paper considers pairs of optimization problems that are defined from a single input and for which it is desired to find a good approximation to either one of the problems. In many instances, it is possible to efficiently find an…
We consider the Minimum Coverage Kernel problem: given a set $B$ of $d$-dimensional boxes, find a subset of $B$ of minimum size covering the same region as $B$. This problem is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard, but as for many $\mathsf{NP}$-hard problems…
All Colors Shortest Path problem defined on an undirected graph aims at finding a shortest, possibly non-simple, path where every color occurs at least once, assuming that each vertex in the graph is associated with a color known in…
An $s$-sparse polynomial has at most $s$ monomials with nonzero coefficients. The Equivalence Testing problem for sparse polynomials (ETsparse) asks to decide if a given polynomial $f$ is equivalent to (i.e., in the orbit of) some…
We introduce and study the Minimum Feasible Tileset problem: Given a set of symbols and subsets of these symbols (scenarios), find a smallest possible number of pairs of symbols (tiles) such that each scenario can be formed by selecting at…
An NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem $\Pi$ is said to have an {\em approximation threshold} if there is some $t$ such that the optimal value of $\Pi$ can be approximated in polynomial time within a ratio of $t$, and it is NP-hard…
We study the complexity of symmetric assembly puzzles: given a collection of simple polygons, can we translate, rotate, and possibly flip them so that their interior-disjoint union is line symmetric? On the negative side, we show that the…
Given an $n$-vertex non-negatively real-weighted graph $G$, whose vertices are partitioned into a set of $k$ clusters, a \emph{clustered network design problem} on $G$ consists of solving a given network design optimization problem on $G$,…
We study the inapproximability of the induced disjoint paths problem on an arbitrary $n$-node $m$-edge undirected graph, which is to connect the maximum number of the $k$ source-sink pairs given in the graph via induced disjoint paths. It…
Given a linear system, we consider the problem of finding a small set of variables to affect with an input so that the resulting system is controllable. We show that this problem is NP-hard; indeed, we show that even approximating the…
In this article, we study the problem of finding the longest common separable pattern between several permutations. We give a polynomial-time algorithm when the number of input permutations is fixed and show that the problem is NP-hard for…
We prove that for sufficiently large K, it is NP-hard to color K-colorable graphs with less than 2^{K^{1/3}} colors. This improves the previous result of K versus K^{O(log K)} in Khot [14].