Related papers: Submodular Function Minimization and Polarity
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions representable as a difference between submodular functions. Similar to [30], our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective function at…
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…
DR-submodular functions encompass a broad class of functions which are generally non-convex and non-concave. We study the problem of minimizing any DR-submodular function, with continuous and general integer variables, under box constraints…
We consider the pointwise approximation of a subharmonic function by the logarithm of the modulus of an entire function up to a bounded quantity. In the case of finite order an estimate from below of the planar Lebesgue measure of an…
Submodularity is a discrete domain functional property that can be interpreted as mimicking the role of the well-known convexity/concavity properties in the continuous domain. Submodular functions exhibit strong structure that lead to…
Submodular extensions of an energy function can be used to efficiently compute approximate marginals via variational inference. The accuracy of the marginals depends crucially on the quality of the submodular extension. To identify the best…
Submodularity is a key property in discrete optimization. Submodularity has been widely used for analyzing the greedy algorithm to give performance bounds and providing insight into the construction of valid inequalities for mixed-integer…
We study the Minimum Submodular-Cost Allocation problem (MSCA). In this problem we are given a finite ground set $V$ and $k$ non-negative submodular set functions $f_1 ,..., f_k$ on $V$. The objective is to partition $V$ into $k$ (possibly…
Sparse methods for supervised learning aim at finding good linear predictors from as few variables as possible, i.e., with small cardinality of their supports. This combinatorial selection problem is often turned into a convex optimization…
We study the problem of maximizing a function that is approximately submodular under a cardinality constraint. Approximate submodularity implicitly appears in a wide range of applications as in many cases errors in evaluation of a…
We consider the problem of maximizing non-negative non-decreasing set functions. Although most of the recent work focus on exploiting submodularity, it turns out that several objectives we encounter in practice are not submodular.…
In contrast to the many continuous global optimization methods that assume the objective function and constraints are factorable, we study how to find globally maximal solutions to problems that are not factorable, focusing on a particular…
We present a provably more efficient implementation of the Minimum Norm Point Algorithm conceived by Fujishige than the one presented in \cite{FUJI06}. The algorithm solves the minimization problem for a class of functions known as…
Minimizing a sum of simple submodular functions of limited support is a special case of general submodular function minimization that has seen numerous applications in machine learning. We develop fast techniques for instances where…
We consider minimization of functions that are compositions of convex or prox-regular functions (possibly extended-valued) with smooth vector functions. A wide variety of important optimization problems fall into this framework. We describe…
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…
Set functions with convenient properties (such as submodularity) appear in application areas of current interest, such as algorithmic game theory, and allow for improved optimization algorithms. It is natural to ask (e.g., in the context of…
This paper considers the minimization problem of relaxed submodular functions. For a positive integer $k$, a set function is called $k$-distant submodular if the submodular inequality holds for every pair whose symmetric difference is at…
Symmetric submodular functions are an important family of submodular functions capturing many interesting cases including cut functions of graphs and hypergraphs. Maximization of such functions subject to various constraints receives little…
Submodular functions and their optimization have found applications in diverse settings ranging from machine learning and data mining to game theory and economics. In this work, we consider the constrained maximization of a submodular…