Related papers: Quantifying Variational Approximation for the Log-…
We analyze variational inference for highly symmetric graphical models such as those arising from first-order probabilistic models. We first show that for these graphical models, the tree-reweighted variational objective lends itself to a…
We develop a new algorithmic technique that allows to transfer some constant time approximation algorithms for general graphs into random order streaming algorithms. We illustrate our technique by proving that in random order streams with…
Given a vertex-weighted connected graph $G = (V, E)$, the maximum weight internal spanning tree (MwIST for short) problem asks for a spanning tree $T$ of $G$ such that the total weight of the internal vertices in $T$ is maximized. The…
We develop fast approximation algorithms for the minimum-cost version of the Bounded-Degree MST problem (BD-MST) and its generalization the Crossing Spanning Tree problem (Crossing-ST). We solve the underlying LP to within a $(1+\epsilon)$…
We prove the following result about approximating the maximum independent set in a graph. Informally, we show that any approximation algorithm with a ``non-trivial'' approximation ratio (as a function of the number of vertices of the input…
Constructing the maximum spanning tree $T$ of an edge-weighted connected graph $G$ is one of the important research topics in computer science and optimization, and the related research results have played an active role in practical…
In recent years, non-parametric methods utilizing random walks on graphs have been used to solve a wide range of machine learning problems, but in their simplest form they do not scale well due to the quadratic complexity. In this paper, a…
We introduce a graph partitioning problem motivated by computational topology and propose two algorithms that produce approximate solutions. Specifically, given a weighted, undirected graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, we desire to find…
This paper focuses on finding a spanning tree of a graph to maximize the number of its internal vertices. We present an approximation algorithm for this problem which can achieve a performance ratio $\frac{4}{3}$ on undirected simple…
Given a connected vertex-weighted graph $G$, the maximum weight internal spanning tree (MaxwIST) problem asks for a spanning tree of $G$ that maximizes the total weight of internal nodes. This problem is NP-hard and APX-hard, with the…
The tree-cut width of a graph is a graph parameter defined by Wollan [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B, 110:47-66, 2015] with the help of tree-cut decompositions. In certain cases, tree-cut width appears to be more adequate than treewidth as an…
We introduce a globally-convergent algorithm for optimizing the tree-reweighted (TRW) variational objective over the marginal polytope. The algorithm is based on the conditional gradient method (Frank-Wolfe) and moves pseudomarginals within…
We consider partitions of a point set into two parts, and the lengths of the minimum spanning trees of the original set and of the two parts. If $w(P)$ denotes the length of a minimum spanning tree of $P$, we show that every set $P$ of $n…
Computing the partition function, $Z$, of an Ising model over a graph of $N$ \enquote{spins} is most likely exponential in $N$. Efficient variational methods, such as Belief Propagation (BP) and Tree Re-Weighted (TRW) algorithms, compute…
We study approximations of the partition function of dense graphical models. Partition functions of graphical models play a fundamental role is statistical physics, in statistics and in machine learning. Two of the main methods for…
We study the Requirement Cut problem, a generalization of numerous classical graph partitioning problems including Multicut, Multiway Cut, $k$-Cut, and Steiner Multicut among others. Given a graph with edge costs, terminal groups $(S_1,…
In a breakthrough work, Kawarabayashi and Thorup (J.~ACM'19) gave a near-linear time deterministic algorithm for minimum cut in a simple graph $G = (V,E)$. A key component is finding the $(1+\varepsilon)$-KT partition of $G$, the coarsest…
Given a graph $G = (V,E)$ and a subset $T \subseteq V$ of terminals, a \emph{Steiner tree} of $G$ is a tree that spans $T$. In the vertex-weighted Steiner tree (VST) problem, each vertex is assigned a non-negative weight, and the goal is to…
Given a graphical model (GM), computing its partition function is the most essential inference task, but it is computationally intractable in general. To address the issue, iterative approximation algorithms exploring certain local…
Given a graph G, the {\em maximum internal spanning tree problem} (MIST for short) asks for computing a spanning tree T of G such that the number of internal vertices in T is maximized. MIST has possible applications in the design of…