Related papers: Instance Specific Approximations for Submodular Ma…
In this paper we describe a new algorithm called Fast Adaptive Sequencing Technique (FAST) for maximizing a monotone submodular function under a cardinality constraint $k$ whose approximation ratio is arbitrarily close to $1-1/e$, is…
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…
Mean field inference in probabilistic models is generally a highly nonconvex problem. Existing optimization methods, e.g., coordinate ascent algorithms, can only generate local optima. In this work we propose provable mean filed methods for…
Submodularity in combinatorial optimization has been a topic of many studies and various algorithmic techniques exploiting submodularity of a studied problem have been proposed. It is therefore natural to ask, in cases where the cost…
We propose subsampling as a unified algorithmic technique for submodular maximization in centralized and online settings. The idea is simple: independently sample elements from the ground set, and use simple combinatorial techniques (such…
Stochastic optimization of continuous objectives is at the heart of modern machine learning. However, many important problems are of discrete nature and often involve submodular objectives. We seek to unleash the power of stochastic…
We consider a robust formulation, introduced by Krause et al. (2008), of the classical cardinality constrained monotone submodular function maximization problem, and give the first constant factor approximation results. The robustness…
In this paper, we propose a new framework for designing fast parallel algorithms for fundamental statistical subset selection tasks that include feature selection and experimental design. Such tasks are known to be weakly submodular and are…
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.…
We present a simple combinatorial $\frac{1 -e^{-2}}{2}$-approximation algorithm for maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a knapsack and a matroid constraint. This classic problem is known to be hard to approximate within…
This paper considers an optimization problem for a dynamical system whose evolution depends on a collection of binary decision variables. We develop scalable approximation algorithms with provable suboptimality bounds to provide…
Randomization is a fundamental tool used in many theoretical and practical areas of computer science. We study here the role of randomization in the area of submodular function maximization. In this area most algorithms are randomized, and…
We study a linear quadratic regulation problem with a constraint where the control input can be nonzero only at a limited number of times. Given that this constraint leads to a combinational optimization problem, we adopt a greedy method to…
Submodular maximization under various constraints is a fundamental problem studied continuously, in both computer science and operations research, since the late $1970$'s. A central technique in this field is to approximately optimize the…
The optimal pricing problem is a fundamental problem that arises in combinatorial auctions. Suppose that there is one seller who has indivisible items and multiple buyers who want to purchase a combination of the items. The seller wants to…
In this work we give two new algorithms that use similar techniques for (non-monotone) submodular function maximization subject to a cardinality constraint. The first is an offline fixed parameter tractable algorithm that guarantees a…
In this paper we study the fundamental problems of maximizing a continuous non-monotone submodular function over the hypercube, both with and without coordinate-wise concavity. This family of optimization problems has several applications…
We study the problem of incorporating risk while making combinatorial decisions under uncertainty. We formulate a discrete submodular maximization problem for selecting a set using Conditional-Value-at-Risk (CVaR), a risk metric commonly…
In this paper, we consider the optimization problem Submodular Cover (SCP), which is to find a minimum cardinality subset of a finite universe $U$ such that the value of a submodular function $f$ is above an input threshold $\tau$. In…
We briefly discuss the greedy method and a couple of its more efficient variants for approximately maximizing monotone submodular functions.