Related papers: A Note on Isolating Cut Lemma for Submodular Funct…
Li and Panigrahi, in recent work, obtained the first deterministic algorithm for the global minimum cut of a weighted undirected graph that runs in time $o(mn)$. They introduced an elegant and powerful technique to find isolating cuts for a…
Submodular functions describe a variety of discrete problems in machine learning, signal processing, and computer vision. However, minimizing submodular functions poses a number of algorithmic challenges. Recent work introduced an…
We present a provably more efficient implementation of the Minimum Norm Point Algorithm conceived by Fujishige than the one presented in \cite{FUJI06}. The algorithm solves the minimization problem for a class of functions known as…
Techniques based on minimal graph cuts have become a standard tool for solving combinatorial optimization problems arising in image processing and computer vision applications. These techniques can be used to minimize objective functions…
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions representable as a difference between submodular functions. Similar to [30], our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective function at…
We consider minimization problems with bisubmodular objective functions. We propose valid inequalities, namely the poly-bimatroid inequalities, and provide a complete linear description of the convex hull of the epigraph of a bisubmodular…
Using polarity, we give an outer polyhedral approximation for the epigraph of set functions. For a submodular function, we prove that the corresponding polar relaxation is exact; hence, it is equivalent to the Lov\'asz extension. The polar…
This paper bridges discrete and continuous optimization approaches for decomposable submodular function minimization, in both the standard and parametric settings. We provide improved running times for this problem by reducing it to a…
Minimizing a sum of simple submodular functions of limited support is a special case of general submodular function minimization that has seen numerous applications in machine learning. We develop fast techniques for instances where…
We study the Minimum Submodular-Cost Allocation problem (MSCA). In this problem we are given a finite ground set $V$ and $k$ non-negative submodular set functions $f_1 ,..., f_k$ on $V$. The objective is to partition $V$ into $k$ (possibly…
We consider submodular function minimization in the oracle model: given black-box access to a submodular set function $f:2^{[n]}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$, find an element of $\arg\min_S \{f(S)\}$ using as few queries to $f(\cdot)$ as…
Submodularity is a fundamental phenomenon in combinatorial optimization. Submodular functions occur in a variety of combinatorial settings such as coverage problems, cut problems, welfare maximization, and many more. Therefore, a lot of…
The Isolation Lemma of Mulmuley, Vazirani and Vazirani [Combinatorica'87] provides a self-reduction scheme that allows one to assume that a given instance of a problem has a unique solution, provided a solution exists at all. Since its…
We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of submodular set functions assuming minimization oracles of each summand function. Most existing approaches reformulate the problem as the convex minimization of the sum of the corresponding…
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…
In contrast to the many continuous global optimization methods that assume the objective function and constraints are factorable, we study how to find globally maximal solutions to problems that are not factorable, focusing on a particular…
Given a hypergraph $H$ and a weight function $w: V \rightarrow \{1, \dots, M\}$ on its vertices, we say that $w$ is isolating if there is exactly one edge of minimum weight $w(e) = \sum_{i \in e} w(i)$. The Isolation Lemma is a…
The submodular partitioning problem asks to minimize, over all partitions $P$ of a ground set $V$, the sum of a given submodular function $f$ over the parts of $P$. The problem has seen considerable work in approximability, as it…
We study a mixed-integer set $S:=\{(x,t) \in \{0,1\}^n \times \mathbb{R}: f(x) \ge t\}$ arising in the submodular maximization problem, where $f$ is a submodular function defined over $\{0,1\}^n$. We use intersection cuts to tighten a…
Submodular functions are a fundamental object of study in combinatorial optimization, economics, machine learning, etc. and exhibit a rich combinatorial structure. Many subclasses of submodular functions have also been well studied and…