Related papers: Beyond 2-approximation for k-Center in Graphs
We study the $k$-center problem in the context of individual fairness. Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in a metric space and $r_x$ be the distance between $x \in P$ and its $\lceil n/k \rceil$-th nearest neighbor. The problem asks to…
We consider the problem of approximating the girth, $g$, of an unweighted and undirected graph $G=(V,E)$ with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges. A seminal result of Itai and Rodeh [SICOMP'78] gave an additive $1$-approximation in $O(n^2)$ time, and…
In this paper we initiate a systematic study of exact algorithms for well-known clustering problems, namely $k$-Median and $k$-Means. In $k$-Median, the input consists of a set $X$ of $n$ points belonging to a metric space, and the task is…
We consider the (exact, minimum) $k$-cut problem: given a graph and an integer $k$, delete a minimum-weight set of edges so that the remaining graph has at least $k$ connected components. This problem is a natural generalization of the…
It has long been known, since the classical work of (Arora, Karger, Karpinski, JCSS~99), that \MC\ admits a PTAS on dense graphs, and more generally, \kCSP\ admits a PTAS on "dense" instances with $\Omega(n^k)$ constraints. In this paper we…
In the $k$-Center problem, we are given a graph $G=(V,E)$ with positive edge weights and an integer $k$ and the goal is to select $k$ center vertices $C \subseteq V$ such that the maximum distance from any vertex to the closest center…
We give a polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the (not necessarily metric) $k$-Median problem. The algorithm is an $\alpha$-size-approximation algorithm for $\alpha < 1 + 2 \ln(n/k)$. That is, it guarantees a solution having size at…
Calculating the diameter of an undirected graph requires quadratic running time under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis and this barrier works even against any approximation better than 3/2. For planar graphs with positive edge…
The clustering problem, in its many variants, has numerous applications in operations research and computer science (e.g., in applications in bioinformatics, image processing, social network analysis, etc.). As sizes of data sets have grown…
The $k$-cut problem asks, given a connected graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, to find a minimum-weight set of edges whose removal splits $G$ into $k$ connected components. We give the first polynomial-time algorithm with approximation…
For an integer $k\geq 1$, the objective of \textsc{$k$-Geodesic Center} is to find a set $\mathcal{C}$ of $k$ isometric paths such that the maximum distance between any vertex $v$ and $\mathcal{C}$ is minimised. Introduced by Gromov,…
A graph $G$ is said to be a $(k,\ell)$-graph if its vertex set can be partitioned into $k$ independent sets and $\ell$ cliques. It is well established that the recognition problem for $(k,\ell)$-graphs is NP-complete whenever $k \geq 3$ or…
Consider the following "local" cut-detection problem in a directed graph: We are given a seed vertex $x$ and need to remove at most $k$ edges so that at most $\nu$ edges can be reached from $x$ (a "local" cut) or output $\bot$ to indicate…
Computing edge-connected components in directed and undirected graphs is a fundamental and well-studied problem in graph algorithms. In a very recent breakthrough, Korhonen [STOC 2025] showed that for any fixed $k$, the $k$-edge connected…
We study the problem of approximating the number of $k$-cliques in a graph when given query access to the graph. We consider the standard query model for general graphs via (1) degree queries, (2) neighbor queries and (3) pair queries. Let…
We present a series of almost settled inapproximability results for three fundamental problems. The first in our series is the subexponential-time inapproximability of the maximum independent set problem, a question studied in the area of…
In the k-Connected Directed Steiner Tree problem (k-DST), we are given a directed graph G=(V, E) with edge (or vertex) costs, a root vertex r, a set of q terminals T, and a connectivity requirement k>0; the goal is to find a minimum-cost…
For a positive integer $k \ge 1$, a $k$-star ($k^+$-star, $k^-$-star, respectively) is a connected graph containing a degree-$\ell$ vertex and $\ell$ degree-$1$ vertices, where $\ell = k$ ($\ell \ge k$, $1 \le \ell \le k$, respectively).…
In a metric space, a set of point sets of roughly the same size and an integer $k\geq 1$ are given as the input and the goal of data-distributed $k$-center is to find a subset of size $k$ of the input points as the set of centers to…
The \emph{maximal $k$-edge-connected subgraphs} problem is a classical graph clustering problem studied since the 70's. Surprisingly, no non-trivial technique for this problem in weighted graphs is known: a very straightforward…