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In this paper, we study the weighted $k$-server problem on the uniform metric in both the offline and online settings. We start with the offline setting. In contrast to the (unweighted) $k$-server problem which has a polynomial-time…
We describe a simple deterministic $O( \varepsilon^{-1} \log \Delta)$ round distributed algorithm for $(2\alpha+1)(1 + \varepsilon)$ approximation of minimum weighted dominating set on graphs with arboricity at most $\alpha$. Here $\Delta$…
A bipartite graph $G(U,V;E)$ that admits a perfect matching is given. One player imposes a permutation $\pi$ over $V$, the other player imposes a permutation $\sigma$ over $U$. In the greedy matching algorithm, vertices of $U$ arrive in…
Wattenhofer [WW04] derive a complicated distributed algorithm to compute a weighted matching of an arbitrary weighted graph, that is at most a factor 5 away from the maximum weighted matching of that graph. We show that a variant of the…
The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In each round, a vertex $u$ is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then…
This paper presents a new lower bound for the discrete strategy improvement algorithm for solving parity games due to Voege and Jurdziski. First, we informally show which structures are difficult to solve for the algorithm. Second, we…
A long-standing open question is which graph class is the most general one permitting constant-time constant-factor approximations for dominating sets. The approximation ratio has been bounded by increasingly general parameters such as…
Challenge the champ tournaments are one of the simplest forms of competition, where a (initially selected) champ is repeatedly challenged by other players. If a player beats the champ, then that player is considered the new (current) champ.…
We revisit the coalition structure generation problem in which the goal is to partition the players into exhaustive and disjoint coalitions so as to maximize the social welfare. One of our key results is a general polynomial-time algorithm…
The famous $k$-means++ algorithm of Arthur and Vassilvitskii [SODA 2007] is the most popular way of solving the $k$-means problem in practice. The algorithm is very simple: it samples the first center uniformly at random and each of the…
Chess championships are often organised as a Swiss-system tournament, causing great challenges in ranking the participants due to the different strength of schedules and possible circular triads. The paper suggests that pairwise comparison…
Motivated by an application in kidney exchange, we study the following query-commit problem: we are given the set of vertices of a non-bipartite graph G. The set of edges in this graph are not known ahead of time. We can query any pair of…
Consider a gambling game in which we are allowed to repeatedly bet a portion of our bankroll at favorable odds. We investigate the question of how to minimize the expected number of rounds needed to increase our bankroll to a given target…
A tournament is an orientation of a complete graph. A vertex that can reach every other vertex within two steps is called a \emph{king}. We study the complexity of finding $k$ kings in a tournament graph. We show that the randomized query…
Nearly three decades ago, Bar-Noy, Motwani and Naor showed that no online edge-coloring algorithm can edge color a graph optimally. Indeed, their work, titled "the greedy algorithm is optimal for on-line edge coloring", shows that the…
We study the online load balancing problem on unrelated machines, with the objective of minimizing the square of the $\ell_2$ norm of the loads on the machines. The greedy algorithm of Awerbuch et al. (STOC'95) is optimal for deterministic…
We study dynamic $(1-\epsilon)$-approximate rounding of fractional matchings -- a key ingredient in numerous breakthroughs in the dynamic graph algorithms literature. Our first contribution is a surprisingly simple deterministic rounding…
For every $2$-regular graph $F$ of order $v$, the Oberwolfach problem $OP(F)$ asks whether there is a $2$-factorization of $K_v$ ($v$ odd) or $K_v$ minus a $1$-factor ($v$ even) into copies of $F$. Posed by Ringel in 1967 and extensively…
We present a series of almost settled inapproximability results for three fundamental problems. The first in our series is the subexponential-time inapproximability of the maximum independent set problem, a question studied in the area of…
A tournament on $n$ agents is a complete oriented graph with the agents as vertices and edges that describe the win-loss outcomes of the $\binom{n}{2}$ matches played between each pair of agents. The winner of a tournament is determined by…