English
Related papers

Related papers: Definable Inapproximability: New Challenges for Du…

200 papers

We present an approximation notion for NP-hard optimization problems represented by binary functions. We prove that (assuming P != NP) the new notion is strictly stronger than FPTAS, but strictly weaker than having a polynomial-time…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Samuel Bismuth , Erel Segal-Halevi

Many combinatorial optimization problems are often considered intractable to solve exactly or by approximation. An example of such problem is maximum clique which -- under standard assumptions in complexity theory -- cannot be solved in…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2021-07-27 Tapani Toivonen

We show that computing even very coarse approximations of critical points is intractable for simple classes of nonconvex functions. More concretely, we prove that if there exists a polynomial-time algorithm that takes as input a polynomial…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-01-30 Amir Ali Ahmadi , Georgina Hall

The (Non-Preemptive) Throughput Maximization problem is a natural and fundamental scheduling problem. We are given $n$ jobs, where each job $j$ is characterized by a processing time and a time window, contained in a global interval $[0,T)$,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Alexander Armbruster , Fabrizio Grandoni , Antoine Tinguely , Andreas Wiese

We study the exponential time complexity of approximate counting satisfying assignments of CNFs. We reduce the problem to deciding satisfiability of a CNF. Our reduction preserves the number of variables of the input formula and thus also…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2012-08-14 Patrick Traxler

Routing and scheduling problems are fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization, and also have many applications. Most variations of these problems are NP-Hard, so we need to use heuristics to solve these problems on large instances,…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2015-02-20 Arindam Pal

In this thesis, we settle the computational complexity of some fundamental questions in polynomial optimization. These include the questions of (i) finding a local minimum, (ii) testing local minimality of a point, and (iii) deciding…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-08-28 Jeffrey Zhang

For many optimization problems in machine learning, finding an optimal solution is computationally intractable and we seek algorithms that perform well in practice. Since computational intractability often results from pathological…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-25 Eric Balkanski , Sharon Qian , Yaron Singer

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) consist of a set of variables taking values from some finite domain and a set of local constraints on these variables. The objective is to find an assignment to the variables that maximizes the…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Amey Bhangale , Yezhou Zhang

Numerically computing global policies to optimal control problems for complex dynamical systems is mostly intractable. In consequence, a number of approximation methods have been developed. However, none of the current methods can quantify…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-03-05 Ashwin Khadke , Hartmut Geyer

Until now, Computer Scientists have concerned themselves with identifying efficient algorithms for solving the general case of some problem -- that is finding one which performs well when the size of the input tends to infinity. In this…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2026-04-21 Mircea-Adrian Digulescu

We prove the #P-hardness of the counting problems associated with various satisfiability, graph and combinatorial problems, when restricted to planar instances. These problems include \begin{romannum} \item[{}] {\sc 3Sat, 1-3Sat, 1-Ex3Sat,…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Harry B. Hunt , Madhav V. Marathe , Venkatesh Radhakrishnan , Richard E. Stearns

We consider the task of performing probabilistic inference with probabilistic logical models. Many algorithms for approximate inference with such models are based on sampling. From a logic programming perspective, sampling boils down to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Daan Fierens

Assuming a cloning oracle, satisfiability, which is an NP complete problem, is shown to belong to $BPP^C$ and $BQP^C$ (depending on the ability of the oracle C to clone either a binary random variable or a qubit). The same result is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 John A. Drakopoulos , Theodore N. Tomaras

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…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2008-12-15 Uriel Feige

Advancements in mathematical programming have made it possible to efficiently tackle large-scale real-world problems that were deemed intractable just a few decades ago. However, provably optimal solutions may not be accepted due to the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-22 Kevin-Martin Aigner , Marc Goerigk , Michael Hartisch , Frauke Liers , Arthur Miehlich

An efficient and flexible engine for computing fixed points is critical for many practical applications. In this paper, we firstly present a goal-directed fixed point computation strategy in the logic programming paradigm. The strategy…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Hai-Feng Guo , Gopal Gupta

Recent work by Atserias and Dawar (J. Log. Comp 2019) and Tucker-Foltz (LMCS 2024) has established undefinability results in fixed-point logic with counting (FPC) corresponding to many classical complexity results from the hardness of…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Anuj Dawar , Bálint Molnár

We study the computational complexity of approximating general constrained Markov decision processes. Our primary contribution is the design of a polynomial time $(0,\epsilon)$-additive bicriteria approximation algorithm for finding optimal…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-02-12 Jeremy McMahan

We introduce an alternative approach for constrained mathematical programming problems. It rests on two main aspects: an efficient way to compute optimal solutions for unconstrained problems, and multipliers regarded as variables for a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-10-27 Pablo Pedregal