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We introduce and study a novel generalization of the classical Knapsack Problem (KP), called the Colored Knapsack Problem (CKP). In this problem, the items are partitioned into classes of colors and the packed items need to be ordered such…
Balls-and-bins games have been a wildly successful tool for modeling load balancing problems. In this paper, we study a new scenario, which we call the ball recycling game, defined as follows: Throw m balls into n bins i.i.d. according to a…
NP complete problem is one of the most challenging issues. The question of whether all problems in NP are also in P is generally considered one of the most important open questions in mathematics and theoretical computer science as it has…
In this work, we examine a generic class of simple distributed balls-into-bins algorithms. Exploiting the strong concentration bounds that apply to balls-into-bins games, we provide an iterative method to compute accurate estimates of the…
We study a family of sorting match puzzles on grids, which we call permutation match puzzles. In this puzzle, each row and column of a $n \times n$ grid is labeled with an ordering constraint -- ascending (A) or descending (D) -- and the…
We examine the computational complexity of testing and finding small plans in probabilistic planning domains with both flat and propositional representations. The complexity of plan evaluation and existence varies with the plan type sought;…
Cutting and packing problems are present in many, at first glance unconnected, areas, therefore it's beneficial to have a good understanding of their underlying structure, to select proper techniques for finding solutions. Cutting and…
In clustering problems, a central decision-maker is given a complete metric graph over vertices and must provide a clustering of vertices that minimizes some objective function. In fair clustering problems, vertices are endowed with a color…
We study a two-dimensional generalization of the classical Bin Packing problem, denoted as 2D Demand Bin Packing. In this context, each bin is a horizontal timeline, and rectangular tasks (representing electric appliances or computational…
We present new approximation schemes for bin packing based on the following two approaches: (1) partitioning the given problem into mostly identical sub-problems of constant size and then construct a solution by combining the solutions of…
We analyze the computational complexity of several new variants of edge-matching puzzles. First we analyze inequality (instead of equality) constraints between adjacent tiles, proving the problem NP-complete for strict inequalities but…
Given $n$ colored balls, we want to detect if more than $\lfloor n/2\rfloor$ of them have the same color, and if so find one ball with such majority color. We are only allowed to choose two balls and compare their colors, and the goal is to…
We study the complexity of the popular one player combinatorial game known as Flood-It. In this game the player is given an n by n board of tiles where each tile is allocated one of c colours. The goal is to make the colours of all tiles…
The study of {\em balls-into-bins processes} or {\em occupancy problems} has a long history. These processes can be used to translate realistic problems into mathematical ones in a natural way. In general, the goal of a balls-into-bins…
This paper focuses on exact approaches for the Colored Bin Packing Problem (CBPP), a generalization of the classical one-dimensional Bin Packing Problem in which each item has, in addition to its length, a color, and no two items of the…
Given a set of n balls each colored with a color, a ball is said to be majority, k-majority, plurality if its color class has size larger than half of the number of balls, has size at least k, has size larger than any other color class;…
In sorting situations where the final destination of each item is known, it is natural to repeatedly choose items and place them where they belong, allowing the intervening items to shift by one to make room. (In fact, a special case of…
We analyze the computational complexity of two 2-player games involving packing objects into a box. In the first game, players alternate drawing polycubes from a shared pile and placing them into an initially empty box in any available…
We convert, within polynomial-time and sequential processing, NP-Complete Problems into a problem of deciding feasibility of a given system S of linear equations with constants and coefficients of binary-variables that are 0, 1, or -1. S is…
Inspired by connections to two dimensional quantum theory, we define several models of computation based on permuting distinguishable particles (which we call balls), and characterize their computational complexity. In the quantum setting,…