Related papers: Oracle Tractability of Skew Bisubmodular Functions

Using polarity, we give an outer polyhedral approximation for the epigraph of set functions. For a submodular function, we prove that the corresponding polar relaxation is exact; hence, it is equivalent to the Lov\'asz extension. The polar…

Submodular functions are relevant to machine learning for at least two reasons: (1) some problems may be expressed directly as the optimization of submodular functions and (2) the lovasz extension of submodular functions provides a useful…

In this paper, we study classes of discrete convex functions: submodular functions on modular semilattices and L-convex functions on oriented modular graphs. They were introduced by the author in complexity classification of minimum…

We consider a class of sparsity-inducing regularization terms based on submodular functions. While previous work has focused on non-decreasing functions, we explore symmetric submodular functions and their \lova extensions. We show that the…

We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of submodular set functions assuming minimization oracles of each summand function. Most existing approaches reformulate the problem as the convex minimization of the sum of the corresponding…

Submodular set-functions have many applications in combinatorial optimization, as they can be minimized and approximately maximized in polynomial time. A key element in many of the algorithms and analyses is the possibility of extending the…

We introduce a new class of functions that can be minimized in polynomial time in the value oracle model. These are functions $f$ satisfying $f(x)+f(y)\ge f(x \sqcap y)+f(x \sqcup y)$ where the domain of each variable $x_i$ corresponds to…

We consider the problem of minimizing a smooth, Lipschitz, convex function over a compact, convex set using sub-zeroth-order oracles: an oracle that outputs the sign of the directional derivative for a given point and a given direction, an…

In this paper we provide improved running times and oracle complexities for approximately minimizing a submodular function. Our main result is a randomized algorithm, which given any submodular function defined on $n$-elements with range…

This paper presents the first combinatorial polynomial-time algorithm for minimizing submodular set functions, answering an open question posed in 1981 by Grotschel, Lovasz, and Schrijver. The algorithm employs a scaling scheme that uses a…

Many combinatorial problems arising in machine learning can be reduced to the problem of minimizing a submodular function. Submodular functions are a natural discrete analog of convex functions, and can be minimized in strongly polynomial…

We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function over a convex set given access only to an evaluation oracle for the function and a membership oracle for the set. We give a simple algorithm which solves this problem with…

Submodularity is a fundamental phenomenon in combinatorial optimization. Submodular functions occur in a variety of combinatorial settings such as coverage problems, cut problems, welfare maximization, and many more. Therefore, a lot of…

Slack and margin rescaling are variants of the structured output SVM, which is frequently applied to problems in computer vision such as image segmentation, object localization, and learning parts based object models. They define convex…

This paper presents a polynomial-time $1/2$-approximation algorithm for maximizing nonnegative $k$-submodular functions. This improves upon the previous $\max\{1/3, 1/(1+a)\}$-approximation by Ward and \v{Z}ivn\'y~(SODA'14), where…

Given an undirected graph, the Densest-k-Subgraph problem (DkS) seeks to find a subset of k vertices such that the sum of the edge weights in the corresponding subgraph is maximized. The problem is known to be NP-hard, and is also very…

We consider the problem of minimizing a composite convex function with two different access methods: an oracle, for which we can evaluate the value and gradient, and a structured function, which we access only by solving a convex…

The Lov\'asz hinge is a convex surrogate recently proposed for structured binary classification, in which $k$ binary predictions are made simultaneously and the error is judged by a submodular set function. Despite its wide usage in image…

Submodular functions are discrete functions that model laws of diminishing returns and enjoy numerous algorithmic applications. They have been used in many areas, including combinatorial optimization, machine learning, and economics. In…

In this paper, we address the problem of minimizing a convex function f over a convex set, with the extra constraint that some variables must be integer. This problem, even when f is a piecewise linear function, is NP-hard. We study an…