Related papers: Time Lower Bounds for the Metropolis Process and S…
Graph matching is one of the most important problems in graph theory and combinatorial optimization, with many applications in various domains. Although meta-heuristic algorithms have had good performance on many NP-Hard and NP-Complete…
The planted coloring problem is a prototypical inference problem for which thresholds for Bayes optimal algorithms, like Belief Propagation (BP), can be computed analytically. In this paper, we analyze the limits and performances of the…
Two directions in algorithms and complexity involve: (1) classifying which optimization problems can be solved in polynomial time, and (2) understanding which computational problems are hard to solve \emph{on average} in addition to the…
We extend the concept of polynomial time approximation algorithms to apply to problems for hierarchically specified graphs, many of which are PSPACE-complete. Assuming P != PSPACE, the existence or nonexistence of such efficient…
The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm allows one to sample asymptotically from any probability distribution $\pi$. There has been recently much work devoted to the development of variants of the MH update which can handle scenarios where such…
Simulated Annealing using Metropolis steps at decreasing temperatures is widely used to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems. In order to improve its efficiency, we can use the Rejection-Free version of the Metropolis…
We study the approximability of two related problems on graphs with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges: $n$-Pairs Shortest Paths ($n$-PSP), where the goal is to find a shortest path between $O(n)$ prespecified pairs, and All Node Shortest Cycles…
Many combinatorial optimization problems can be formulated as the search for a subgraph that satisfies certain properties and minimizes the total weight. We assume here that the vertices correspond to points in a metric space and can take…
Under a standard assumption in complexity theory (NP not in P/poly), we demonstrate a gap between the minimax prediction risk for sparse linear regression that can be achieved by polynomial-time algorithms, and that achieved by optimal…
In this work, we initiate a thorough study of parameterized graph optimization problems in the distributed setting. In a parameterized problem, an algorithm decides whether a solution of size bounded by a \emph{parameter} $k$ exists and if…
For a graph $G$, let $Z(G,\lambda)$ be the partition function of the monomer-dimer system defined by $\sum_k m_k(G)\lambda^k$, where $m_k(G)$ is the number of matchings of size $k$ in $G$. We consider graphs of bounded degree and develop a…
We study the regret of simulated annealing (SA) based approaches to solving discrete stochastic optimization problems. The main theoretical conclusion is that the regret of the simulated annealing algorithm, with either noisy or noiseless…
We give lower bounds on the performance of two of the most popular sampling methods in practice, the Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm (MALA) and multi-step Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) with a leapfrog integrator, when applied to…
Simulated annealing (SA) is a key algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems, which model numerous real-world systems. While SA is commonly used to solve quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems, many…
The All-Pairs Max-Flow problem has gained significant popularity in the last two decades, and many results are known regarding its fine-grained complexity. Despite this, wide gaps remain in our understanding of the time complexity for…
Given a graph $G$, the NP-hard Maximum Planar Subgraph problem (MPS) asks for a planar subgraph of $G$ with the maximum number of edges. There are several heuristic, approximative, and exact algorithms to tackle the problem, but---to the…
Simulated annealing (SA) attracts more attention among classical heuristic algorithms because the solution of the combinatorial optimization problem can be naturally mapped to the ground state of the Ising Hamiltonian. However, in practical…
Approximate message passing (AMP) is a family of iterative algorithms that generalize matrix power iteration. AMP algorithms are known to optimally solve many average-case optimization problems. In this paper, we show that a large class of…
Sensitivity measures how much the output of an algorithm changes, in terms of Hamming distance, when part of the input is modified. While approximation algorithms with low sensitivity have been developed for many problems, no sensitivity…
We study the minimum number of constraints needed to formulate random instances of the maximum stable set problem via linear programs (LPs), in two distinct models. In the uniform model, the constraints of the LP are not allowed to depend…