Related papers: Hardness and Approximation of Submodular Minimum L…
We consider a large family of problems in which an ordering (or, more precisely, a chain of subsets) of a finite set must be chosen to minimize some weighted sum of costs. This family includes variations of Min Sum Set Cover (MSSC), several…
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 the Minimum Latency Submodular Cover problem (MLSC), which consists of a metric $(V,d)$ with source $r\in V$ and $m$ monotone submodular functions $f_1, f_2, ..., f_m: 2^V \rightarrow [0,1]$. The goal is to find a path originating…
We study the problem of ranking with submodular valuations. An instance of this problem consists of a ground set $[m]$, and a collection of $n$ monotone submodular set functions $f^1, \ldots, f^n$, where each $f^i: 2^{[m]} \to R_+$. An…
We give new approximation algorithms for the submodular joint replenishment problem and the inventory routing problem, using an iterative rounding approach. In both problems, we are given a set of $N$ items and a discrete time horizon of…
We consider the problem of maximizing the multilinear extension of a submodular function subject a single matroid constraint or multiple packing constraints with a small number of adaptive rounds of evaluation queries. We obtain the first…
In the minimum cost submodular cover problem (MinSMC), we are given a monotone nondecreasing submodular function $f\colon 2^V \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}^+$, a linear cost function $c: V\rightarrow \mathbb R^{+}$, and an integer $k\leq f(V)$,…
We study the complexity of approximating the multimarginal optimal transport (MOT) distance, a generalization of the classical optimal transport distance, considered here between $m$ discrete probability distributions supported each on $n$…
We consider the following class of submodular k-multiway partitioning problems: (Sub-$k$-MP) $\min \sum_{i=1}^k f(S_i): S_1 \uplus S_2 \uplus \cdots \uplus S_k = V \mbox{ and } S_i \neq \emptyset \mbox{ for all }i\in [k]$. Here $f$ is a…
Increasing reliability and reducing disruptions in supply networks are of increasing importance; for example, power outages in electricity distribution networks cost \$35-50 billion annually in the US. Motivated by the operational…
In this paper, we introduce the problem of Matroid-Constrained Vertex Cover: given a graph with weights on the edges and a matroid imposed on the vertices, our problem is to choose a subset of vertices that is independent in the matroid,…
We introduce several generalizations of classical computer science problems obtained by replacing simpler objective functions with general submodular functions. The new problems include submodular load balancing, which generalizes load…
We study the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular set function subject to linear packing constraints. An instance of this problem consists of a matrix $A \in [0,1]^{m \times n}$, a vector $b \in [1,\infty)^m$, and a monotone…
We pursue a study of the Generalized Demand Matching problem, a common generalization of the $b$-Matching and Knapsack problems. Here, we are given a graph with vertex capacities, edge profits, and asymmetric demands on the edges. The goal…
Submodular optimization generalizes many classic problems in combinatorial optimization and has recently found a wide range of applications in machine learning (e.g., feature engineering and active learning). For many large-scale…
We study two mixed robust/average-case submodular partitioning problems that we collectively call Submodular Partitioning. These problems generalize both purely robust instances of the problem (namely max-min submodular fair allocation…
In the submodular cover problem, we are given a non-negative monotone submodular function $f$ over a ground set $E$ of items, and the goal is to choose a smallest subset $S \subseteq E$ such that $f(S) = Q$ where $Q = f(E)$. In the…
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…
Inspired by regularization techniques in statistics and machine learning, we study complementary composite minimization in the stochastic setting. This problem corresponds to the minimization of the sum of a (weakly) smooth function endowed…
We consider the problem of covering multiple submodular constraints. Given a finite ground set $N$, a cost function $c: N \rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$, $r$ monotone submodular functions $f_1,f_2,\ldots,f_r$ over $N$ and requirements…