Related papers: Approximating Pandora's Box with Correlations
Standard value function approaches to finding policies for Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are generally considered to be intractable for large models. The intractability of these algorithms is to a large extent a…
Designing a safe policy for uncertain environments is crucial in real-world control systems. However, this challenge remains inadequately addressed within the Markov decision process (MDP) framework. This paper presents the first algorithm…
Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with non-negative real edge lengths and an integer parameter $k$, the Min-Max k-Tree Cover problem seeks to find a set of at most $k$ subtrees of $G$, such that the union of the trees is the vertex set $V$. The…
We provide a randomized linear time approximation scheme for a generic problem about clustering of binary vectors subject to additional constrains. The new constrained clustering problem encompasses a number of problems and by solving it,…
Message-passing algorithms based on belief-propagation (BP) are successfully used in many applications including decoding error correcting codes and solving constraint satisfaction and inference problems. BP-based algorithms operate over…
We consider synthesis of control policies that maximize the probability of satisfying given temporal logic specifications in unknown, stochastic environments. We model the interaction between the system and its environment as a Markov…
We show how any PAC learning algorithm that works under the uniform distribution can be transformed, in a blackbox fashion, into one that works under an arbitrary and unknown distribution $\mathcal{D}$. The efficiency of our transformation…
The problem of selecting small groups of itemsets that represent the data well has recently gained a lot of attention. We approach the problem by searching for the itemsets that compress the data efficiently. As a compression technique we…
We define a new framework that unifies the filtration and mapper approaches from TDA, and present efficient algorithms to compute it. Termed the box filtration of a PCD, we grow boxes (hyperrectangles) that are not necessarily centered at…
Short spanning trees subject to additional constraints are important building blocks in various approximation algorithms. Especially in the context of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), new techniques for finding spanning trees with…
We consider the distributed version of the Multiple Knapsack Problem (MKP), where $m$ items are to be distributed amongst $n$ processors, each with a knapsack. We propose different distributed approximation algorithms with a tradeoff…
We consider search problems with nonobligatory inspection and single-item or combinatorial selection. A decision maker is presented with a number of items, each of which contains an unknown price, and can pay an inspection cost to observe…
Chance constrained program where one seeks to minimize an objective over decisions which satisfy randomly disturbed constraints with a given probability is computationally intractable. This paper proposes an approximate approach to address…
Imagine we want to split a group of agents into teams in the most \emph{efficient} way, considering that each agent has their own preferences about their teammates. This scenario is modeled by the extensively studied \textsc{Coalition…
Motivated by modern-day applications such as Attended Home Delivery and Preference-based Group Scheduling, where decision makers wish to steer a large number of customers toward choosing the exact same alternative, we introduce a novel…
A decisionmaker faces $n$ alternatives, each of which represents a potential reward. After investing costly resources into investigating the alternatives, the decisionmaker may select one, or more generally a feasible subset, and obtain the…
We give a number of approximation metatheorems for monotone maximization problems expressible in the first-order logic, in substantially more general settings than the previously known. We obtain * constant-factor approximation algorithm in…
A property $\Pi$ on a finite set $U$ is \emph{monotone} if for every $X \subseteq U$ satisfying $\Pi$, every superset $Y \subseteq U$ of $X$ also satisfies $\Pi$. Many combinatorial properties can be seen as monotone properties. The problem…
In this work we consider the diversity maximization problem, where given a data set $X$ of $n$ elements, and a parameter $k$, the goal is to pick a subset of $X$ of size $k$ maximizing a certain diversity measure. [CH01] defined a variety…
We provide a general framework for getting expected linear time constant factor approximations (and in many cases FPTASs) to several well-known problems in Computational Geometry, such as $k$-center clustering and farthest nearest neighbor.…