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We give the first polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for the Steiner forest problem on planar graphs and, more generally, on graphs of bounded genus. As a first step, we show how to build a Steiner forest spanner for such graphs.…
We present a series of almost settled inapproximability results for three fundamental problems. The first in our series is the subexponential-time inapproximability of the maximum independent set problem, a question studied in the area of…
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…
In the past years, many quantum algorithms have been proposed to tackle hard combinatorial problems. These algorithms, which have been studied in depth in complexity theory, are at the heart of many industrial applications. In particular,…
The emergence of massive graph data sets requires fast mining algorithms. Centrality measures to identify important vertices belong to the most popular analysis methods in graph mining. A measure that is gaining attention is forest…
We study the family of intersection graphs of low density objects in low dimensional Euclidean space. This family is quite general, and includes planar graphs. We prove that such graphs have small separators. Next, we present efficient…
We prove a hardness of sampling result for the anti-ferromagnetic Ising model on random graphs of average degree $d$ for large constant $d$, proving that when the normalized inverse temperature satisfies $\beta>1$ (asymptotically…
We study the mixing time of Glauber dynamics for Ising models in which the interaction matrix contains a single negative spectral outlier. This class includes the anti-ferromagnetic Curie-Weiss model, the anti-ferromagnetic Ising model on…
In Polyamorous Scheduling, we are given an edge-weighted graph and must find a periodic schedule of matchings in this graph which minimizes the maximal weighted waiting time between consecutive occurrences of the same edge. This NP-hard…
We give polynomial-time algorithms for the exact computation of lowest-energy (ground) states, worst margin violators, log partition functions, and marginal edge probabilities in certain binary undirected graphical models. Our approach…
In this paper we propose and study a new complexity model for approximation algorithms. The main motivation are practical problems over large data sets that need to be solved many times for different scenarios, e.g., many multicast trees…
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…
Optimizing a high-dimensional non-convex function is, in general, computationally hard and many problems of this type are hard to solve even approximately. Complexity theory characterizes the optimal approximation ratios achievable in…
We study the computational complexity of the map redistricting problem (gerrymandering). Mathematically, the electoral district designer (gerrymanderer) attempts to partition a weighted graph into $k$ connected components (districts) such…
In the Ising model, we consider the problem of estimating the covariance of the spins at two specified vertices. In the ferromagnetic case, it is easy to obtain an additive approximation to this covariance by repeatedly sampling from the…
We consider the problem of approximating the partition function of the hard-core model on planar graphs of degree at most 4. We show that when the activity lambda is sufficiently large, there is no fully polynomial randomised approximation…
We study the Independent Set (IS) problem in $H$-free graphs, i.e., graphs excluding some fixed graph $H$ as an induced subgraph. We prove several inapproximability results both for polynomial-time and parameterized algorithms.…
Let H be a graph, and let C_H(G) be the number of (subgraph isomorphic) copies of H contained in a graph G. We investigate the fundamental problem of estimating C_H(G). Previous results cover only a few specific instances of this general…
We provide time- and sample-efficient algorithms for learning and testing latent-tree Ising models, i.e. Ising models that may only be observed at their leaf nodes. On the learning side, we obtain efficient algorithms for learning a…
We show that very simple algorithms based on local search are polynomial-time approximation schemes for Maximum Independent Set, Minimum Vertex Cover and Minimum Dominating Set, when the input graphs have a fixed forbidden minor.