Related papers: Tighter inapproximability for set cover
For any $\varepsilon > 0$, we give a polynomial-time $n^\varepsilon$-approximation algorithm for Max Independent Set in graphs of bounded twin-width given with an $O(1)$-sequence. This result is derived from the following time-approximation…
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…
The problem of maximizing the $p$-th power of a $p$-norm over a halfspace-presented polytope in $\R^d$ is a convex maximization problem which plays a fundamental role in computational convexity. It has been shown in 1986 that this problem…
The growing amount of applications that generate vast amount of data in short time scales render the problem of partial monitoring, coupled with prediction, a rather fundamental one. We study the aforementioned canonical problem under the…
We examine the minimum entropy coupling problem, where one must find the minimum entropy variable that has a given set of distributions $S = \{p_1, \dots, p_m \}$ as its marginals. Although this problem is NP-Hard, previous works have…
The $k$-ExactCover problem is a parameterized version of the ExactCover problem, in which we are given a universe $U$, a collection $S$ of subsets of $U$, and an integer $k$, and the task is to determine whether $U$ can be partitioned into…
We provide a new approach for establishing hardness of approximation results, based on the theory recently introduced by the author. It allows one to directly show that approximating a problem beyond a certain threshold requires…
We study the max-min fair allocation problem in which a set of $m$ indivisible items are to be distributed among $n$ agents such that the minimum utility among all agents is maximized. In the restricted setting, the utility of each item $j$…
We study the $\ell_1$-low rank approximation problem, where for a given $n \times d$ matrix $A$ and approximation factor $\alpha \geq 1$, the goal is to output a rank-$k$ matrix $\widehat{A}$ for which $$\|A-\widehat{A}\|_1 \leq \alpha…
The goal of this paper is to understand how exponential-time approximation algorithms can be obtained from existing polynomial-time approximation algorithms, existing parameterized exact algorithms, and existing parameterized approximation…
The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) in the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space is among the oldest and most famous NP-hard optimization problems. In breakthrough works, Arora [J. ACM 1998] and Mitchell [SICOMP 1999] gave the first polynomial…
We prove that no online algorithm (even randomized, against an oblivious adversary) is better than 1/2-competitive for welfare maximization with coverage valuations, unless $NP = RP$. Since the Greedy algorithm is known to be…
The VertexCover problem is proven to be computationally hard in different ways: It is NP-complete to find an optimal solution and even NP-hard to find an approximation with reasonable factors. In contrast, recent experiments suggest that on…
In this paper we show that that greedy bases can be defined as those where the error term using $m$-greedy approximant is uniformly bounded by the best $m$-term approximation with respect to polynomials with constant coefficients in the…
We consider the problem of maximizing the lifetime of coverage (MLCP) of targets in a wireless sensor network with battery-limited sensors. We first show that the MLCP cannot be approximated within a factor less than $\ln n$ by any…
We are given n base elements and a finite collection of subsets of them. The size of any subset varies between p to k (p < k). In addition, we assume that the input contains all possible subsets of size p. Our objective is to find a…
Let $\mathcal{H}=(V,\mathcal{E})$ be a hypergraph with maximum edge size $\ell$ and maximum degree $\Delta$. For given numbers $b_v\in \mathbb{N}_{\geq 2}$, $v\in V$, a set multicover in $\mathcal{H}$ is a set of edges $C \subseteq…
The vertex cover problem is a famous combinatorial problem, and its complexity has been heavily studied. While a 2-approximation can be trivially obtained for it, researchers have not been able to approximate it better than 2-\textit{o}(1).…
We show a number of fine-grained hardness results for the Closest Vector Problem in the $\ell_p$ norm ($\mathrm{CVP}_p$), and its approximate and non-uniform variants. First, we show that $\mathrm{CVP}_p$ cannot be solved in…
In this paper we develop a procedure to deal with a family of parameter-dependent ill-posed problems, for which the exact solution in general does not exist. The original problems are relaxed by considering corresponding approximate ones,…