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Decision tree optimization is fundamental to interpretable machine learning. The most popular approach is to greedily search for the best feature at every decision point, which is fast but provably suboptimal. Recent approaches find the…
Block majorization-minimization (BMM) is a simple iterative algorithm for constrained nonconvex optimization that sequentially minimizes majorizing surrogates of the objective function in each block while the others are held fixed. BMM…
Uniform cost-distance Steiner trees minimize the sum of the total length and weighted path lengths from a dedicated root to the other terminals. They are applied when the tree is intended for signal transmission, e.g. in chip design or…
We present a comprehensive classical and parameterized complexity analysis of decision tree pruning operations, extending recent research on the complexity of learning small decision trees. Thereby, we offer new insights into the…
We study graph ordering problems with a min-max objective. A classical problem of this type is cutwidth, where given a graph we want to order its vertices such that the number of edges crossing any point is minimized. We give a $…
We study the NP-complete Maximum Outerplanar Subgraph problem. The previous best known approximation ratio for this problem is 2/3. We propose a new approximation algorithm which improves the ratio to 7/10.
We propose a simple and natural approximation algorithm for the problem of finding a 2-edge-connected spanning subgraph of minimum total edge cost in a graph. The algorithm maintains a spanning forest starting with an empty edge set. In…
We study the approximability of a number of graph problems: treewidth and pathwidth of graphs, one-shot black (and black-white) pebbling costs of directed acyclic graphs, and a variety of different graph layout problems such as minimum cut…
We revisit the classic Pandora's Box (PB) problem under correlated distributions on the box values. Recent work of arXiv:1911.01632 obtained constant approximate algorithms for a restricted class of policies for the problem that visit boxes…
Several algorithms build on the perfect phylogeny model to infer evolutionary trees. This problem is particularly hard when evolutionary trees are inferred from the fraction of genomes that have mutations in different positions, across…
We consider the problem of query-efficient global max-cut on a weighted undirected graph in the value oracle model examined by [RSW18]. Graph algorithms in this cut query model and other query models have recently been studied for various…
We study budget constrained network upgradeable problems. We are given an undirected edge weighted graph $G=(V,E)$ where the weight an edge $e \in E$ can be upgraded for a cost $c(e)$. Given a budget $B$ for improvement, the goal is to find…
We consider the vehicle routing problem with stochastic demands (VRPSD) on tree structured networks with a single depot. The problem we are concerned with in this paper is to find a set of tours for the vehicle with minimum expected length.…
We consider a class of discrete optimization problems that aim to maximize a submodular objective function subject to a distributed partition matroid constraint. More precisely, we consider a networked scenario in which multiple agents…
The \emph{Tree Augmentation Problem (TAP)} is given a tree $T=(V,E_T)$ and additional set of {\em links} $E$ on $V\times V$, find $F \subseteq E$ such that $T \cup F$ is $2$-edge-connected, and $|F|$ is minimum. The problem is APX-hard…
In this paper we consider a generalization of the well-known budgeted maximum coverage problem. We are given a ground set of elements and a set of bins. The goal is to find a subset of elements along with an associated set of bins, such…
For constrained, not necessarily monotone submodular maximization, all known approximation algorithms with ratio greater than $1/e$ require continuous ideas, such as queries to the multilinear extension of a submodular function and its…
The maximum independent set problem is a classic optimization problem that has also been studied quite intensively in the distributed setting. While the problem is hard to approximate in general, there are good approximation algorithms…
We present a novel stochastic version of the Barnes-Hut approximation. Regarding the level-of-detail (LOD) family of approximations as control variates, we construct an unbiased estimator of the kernel sum being approximated. Through…
Computing optimal transport (OT) distances such as the earth mover's distance is a fundamental problem in machine learning, statistics, and computer vision. In this paper, we study the problem of approximating the general OT distance…