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Given a family of subsets $\mathcal S$ over a set of elements~$X$ and two integers~$p$ and~$k$, Max k-Set Cover consists of finding a subfamily~$\mathcal T \subseteq \mathcal S$ of cardinality at most~$k$, covering at least~$p$ elements…
Several decades ago the Proximal Point Algorithm (PPA) started to gain a long-lasting attraction for both abstract operator theory and numerical optimization communities. Even in modern applications, researchers still use proximal…
In this paper we introduce the concept of additive approximation schemes and apply it to load balancing problems. Additive approximation schemes aim to find a solution with an absolute error in the objective of at most $\epsilon h$ for some…
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 explore algorithms and limitations for sparse optimization problems such as sparse linear regression and robust linear regression. The goal of the sparse linear regression problem is to identify a small number of key features, while the…
Given an approximation algorithm $A$, we want to find the input with the worst approximation ratio, i.e., the input for which $A$'s output's objective value is the worst possible compared to the optimal solution's objective value. Such hard…
Fixed-parameter algorithms, approximation algorithms and moderately exponential algorithms are three major approaches to algorithms design. While each of them being very active in its own, there is an increasing attention to the connection…
Extremal optimization is a new general-purpose method for approximating solutions to hard optimization problems. We study the method in detail by way of the NP-hard graph partitioning problem. We discuss the scaling behavior of extremal…
Here we study the NP-complete $K$-SAT problem. Although the worst-case complexity of NP-complete problems is conjectured to be exponential, there exist parametrized random ensembles of problems where solutions can typically be found in…
This paper studies high-order evaluation complexity for partially separable convexly-constrained optimization involving non-Lipschitzian group sparsity terms in a nonconvex objective function. We propose a partially separable adaptive…
In a chance constrained program (CCP), the decision-makers aim to seek the best decision whose probability of violating the uncertainty constraints is within the prespecified risk level. As a CCP is often nonconvex and is difficult to solve…
In this paper, we study the lower complexity bounds for finite-sum optimization problems, where the objective is the average of $n$ individual component functions. We consider Proximal Incremental First-order (PIFO) algorithms which have…
We introduce the Polychromatic Traveling Salesman Problem (PCTSP), where the input is an edge weighted graph whose vertices are partitioned into $k$ equal-sized color classes, and the goal is to find a minimum-length Hamiltonian cycle that…
We study a general stochastic ranking problem where an algorithm needs to adaptively select a sequence of elements so as to "cover" a random scenario (drawn from a known distribution) at minimum expected cost. The coverage of each scenario…
In the article ''On the (Non) NP-Hardness of Computing Circuit Complexity'', Murray and Williams imply the PARTITION decision problem is not known to be NP-hard via $2^{n^{o(1)}}$-size AC0 reductions. In this note, we show PARTITION is…
We study the Maximum Budgeted Allocation problem, which is the problem of assigning indivisible items to players with budget constraints. In its most general form, an instance of the MBA problem might include many different prices for the…
Designing algorithms for space bounded models with restoration requirements on the space used by the algorithm is an important challenge posed about the catalytic computation model introduced by Buhrman et al. (2014). Motivated by the…
In Descriptive Complexity, there is a vast amount of literature on decision problems, and their classes such as \textbf{P, NP, L and NL}. ~ However, research on the descriptive complexity of optimisation problems has been limited.…
In COCOA 2015, Korman et al. studied the following geometric covering problem: given a set $S$ of $n$ line segments in the plane, find a minimum number of line segments such that every cell in the arrangement of the line segments is…
An NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem $\Pi$ is said to have an {\em approximation threshold} if there is some $t$ such that the optimal value of $\Pi$ can be approximated in polynomial time within a ratio of $t$, and it is NP-hard…