Related papers: A Tighter Approximation Guarantee for Greedy Minim…
Greedy-GQ with linear function approximation, originally proposed in \cite{maei2010toward}, is a value-based off-policy algorithm for optimal control in reinforcement learning, and it has a non-linear two timescale structure with the…
In the maximum coverage problem, we are given subsets $T_1, \ldots, T_m$ of a universe $[n]$ along with an integer $k$ and the objective is to find a subset $S \subseteq [m]$ of size $k$ that maximizes $C(S) := \Big|\bigcup_{i \in S}…
The Small Set Expansion Hypothesis (SSEH) is a conjecture which roughly states that it is NP-hard to distinguish between a graph with a small subset of vertices whose edge expansion is almost zero and one in which all small subsets of…
Motivated by recent work on stochastic gradient descent methods, we develop two stochastic variants of greedy algorithms for possibly non-convex optimization problems with sparsity constraints. We prove linear convergence in expectation to…
This paper introduces the \emph{$d$-distance matching problem}, in which we are given a bipartite graph $G=(S,T;E)$ with $S=\{s_1,\dots,s_n\}$, a weight function on the edges and an integer $d\in\mathbb Z_+$. The goal is to find a maximum…
Maximization of an expensive, unimodal function under random observations has been an important problem in hyperparameter tuning. It features expensive function evaluations (which means small budgets) and a high level of noise. We develop…
We investigate the performance of the standard Greedy algorithm for cardinality constrained maximization of non-submodular nondecreasing set functions. While there are strong theoretical guarantees on the performance of Greedy for…
Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with $V=\{1,\ldots,n\}$, we place on every vertex a token $T_1,\ldots,T_n$. A swap is an exchange of tokens on adjacent vertices. We consider the algorithmic question of finding a shortest sequence of swaps such that…
Let $G$ be a strongly connected directed graph. We consider the following three problems, where we wish to compute the smallest strongly connected spanning subgraph of $G$ that maintains respectively: the $2$-edge-connected blocks of $G$…
We study sparsity in the max-plus algebraic setting. We seek both exact and approximate solutions of the max-plus linear equation with minimum cardinality of support. In the former case, the sparsest solution problem is shown to be…
This paper presents a fast and simple new 2-approximation algorithm for minimum weighted vertex cover. The unweighted version of this algorithm is equivalent to a well-known greedy maximal independent set algorithm. We prove that this…
Motivated by sequential budgeted allocation problems, we investigate online matching problems where connections between vertices are not i.i.d., but they have fixed degree distributions -- the so-called configuration model. We estimate the…
Current flow closeness centrality (CFCC) has a better discriminating ability than the ordinary closeness centrality based on shortest paths. In this paper, we extend this notion to a group of vertices in a weighted graph, and then study the…
Finding a maximum-weight matching is a classical and well-studied problem in computer science, solvable in cubic time in general graphs. We consider the specialization called assignment problem where the input is a bipartite graph, and…
Kernel-based methods provide flexible and accurate algorithms for the reconstruction of functions from meshless samples. A major question in the use of such methods is the influence of the samples locations on the behavior of the…
We study a variation of the classical Shortest Common Superstring (SCS) problem in which a shortest superstring of a finite set of strings $S$ is sought containing as a factor every string of $S$ or its reversal. We call this problem…
Wattenhofer [WW04] derive a complicated distributed algorithm to compute a weighted matching of an arbitrary weighted graph, that is at most a factor 5 away from the maximum weighted matching of that graph. We show that a variant of the…
We investigate the distributed complexity of maximal matching and maximal independent set (MIS) in hypergraphs in the LOCAL model. A maximal matching of a hypergraph $H=(V_H,E_H)$ is a maximal disjoint set $M\subseteq E_H$ of hyperedges and…
Behavior of the entropy numbers of classes of multivariate functions with mixed smoothness is studied here. This problem has a long history and some fundamental problems in the area are still open. The main goal of this paper is to develop…
In the classic maximum coverage problem, we are given subsets $T_1, \dots, T_m$ of a universe $[n]$ along with an integer $k$ and the objective is to find a subset $S \subseteq [m]$ of size $k$ that maximizes $C(S) := |\cup_{i \in S} T_i|$.…