Related papers: FPRAS via MCMC where it mixes torpidly (and very l…
We study the approximability of the four-vertex model, a special case of the six-vertex model.We prove that, despite being NP-hard to approximate in the worst case, the four-vertex model admits a fully polynomial randomized approximation…
We (claim to) prove the extremely surprising fact that NP=RP. It is achieved by creating a Fully Polynomial-Time Randomized Approximation Scheme (FPRAS) for approximately counting the number of independent sets in bounded degree graphs,…
Counting perfect matchings has played a central role in the theory of counting problems. The permanent, corresponding to bipartite graphs, was shown to be #P-complete to compute exactly by Valiant (1979), and a fully polynomial randomized…
The six-vertex model is an important model in statistical physics and has deep connections with counting problems. There have been some fully polynomial randomized approximation schemes (FPRAS) for the six-vertex model [30, 10], which all…
The matrix permanent belongs to the complexity class #P-Complete. It is generally believed to be computationally infeasible for large problem sizes, and significant research has been done on approximation algorithms for the matrix…
We give a fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the all-terminal network reliability problem, which is to determine the probability that, in a undirected graph, assuming each edge fails independently, the…
We investigate the computational difficulty of approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic Ising model on a regular matroid. Jerrum and Sinclair have shown that there is a fully polynomial randomised approximation scheme…
Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is a widely used algorithm design scheme with many applications. To make efficient use of this method, the key step is to prove that the Markov chain is rapid mixing. Canonical paths is one of the two…
The problem of (approximately) counting the independent sets of a bipartite graph (#BIS) is the canonical approximate counting problem that is complete in the intermediate complexity class #RH\Pi_1. It is believed that #BIS does not have an…
Finding the most likely (MAP) configuration of a Markov random field (MRF) is NP-hard in general. A promising, recent technique is to reduce the problem to finding a maximum weight stable set (MWSS) on a derived weighted graph, which if…
We study the approximation complexity of the partition function of the eight-vertex model on general 4-regular graphs. For the first time, we relate the approximability of the eight-vertex model to the complexity of approximately counting…
We show fully polynomial time randomized approximation schemes (FPRAS) for counting matchings of a given size, or more generally sampling/counting monomer-dimer systems in planar, not-necessarily-bipartite, graphs. While perfect matchings…
We consider the stochastic geometry model where the location of each node is a random point in a given metric space, or the existence of each node is uncertain. We study the problems of computing the expected lengths of several…
Weighted model counting (WMC) consists of computing the weighted sum of all satisfying assignments of a propositional formula. WMC is well-known to be #P-hard for exact solving, but admits a fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme…
Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms are simple and extremely powerful techniques to sample from almost arbitrary distributions. The flaw in practice is that it can take a large and/or unknown amount of time to converge to the…
The approximate uniform sampling of graphs with a given degree sequence is a well-known, extensively studied problem in theoretical computer science and has significant applications, e.g., in the analysis of social networks. In this work we…
Given a graph $G$, the NP-hard Maximum Planar Subgraph problem (MPS) asks for a planar subgraph of $G$ with the maximum number of edges. There are several heuristic, approximative, and exact algorithms to tackle the problem, but---to the…
The theoretical models providing mathematical abstractions for several significant optimization problems in machine learning, combinatorial optimization, computer vision and statistical physics have intrinsic similarities. We propose a…
Despite the enormous success of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and related Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, sampling often still represents the computational bottleneck in scientific applications. Availability of parallel resources can…
In this paper we give a fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the number of all matchings in hypergraphs belonging to a class of sparse, uniform hypergraphs. Our method is based on a generalization of the canonical…