Related papers: A Unified Approach to Minimizing Symmetric Submodu…
We present an efficient algorithm to find non-empty minimizers of a symmetric submodular function over any family of sets closed under inclusion. This for example includes families defined by a cardinality constraint, a knapsack constraint,…
Submodular function minimization (SFM) is a fundamental and efficiently solvable problem class in combinatorial optimization with a multitude of applications in various fields. Surprisingly, there is only very little known about constraint…
We define a new class of set functions that in addition to being monotone and subadditive, also admit a very limited form of submodularity defined over a permutation of the ground set. We refer to this permutation as a submodular order.…
In this paper we provide improved running times and oracle complexities for approximately minimizing a submodular function. Our main result is a randomized algorithm, which given any submodular function defined on $n$-elements with range…
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions representable as a difference between submodular functions. Similar to [30], our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective function at…
Submodularity is a fundamental phenomenon in combinatorial optimization. Submodular functions occur in a variety of combinatorial settings such as coverage problems, cut problems, welfare maximization, and many more. Therefore, a lot of…
We provide a generic technique for constructing families of submodular functions to obtain lower bounds for submodular function minimization (SFM). Applying this technique, we prove that any deterministic SFM algorithm on a ground set of…
We extend the work of Narasimhan and Bilmes [30] for minimizing set functions representable as a dierence between submodular functions. Similar to [30], our new algorithms are guaranteed to monotonically reduce the objective function at…
Classes of set functions along with a choice of ground set are a bedrock to determine and develop corresponding variants of greedy algorithms to obtain efficient solutions for combinatorial optimization problems. The class of approximate…
We present a provably more efficient implementation of the Minimum Norm Point Algorithm conceived by Fujishige than the one presented in \cite{FUJI06}. The algorithm solves the minimization problem for a class of functions known as…
We study the problem of ranking with submodular valuations. An instance of this problem consists of a ground set $[m]$, and a collection of $n$ monotone submodular set functions $f^1, \ldots, f^n$, where each $f^i: 2^{[m]} \to R_+$. An…
Submodular functions describe a variety of discrete problems in machine learning, signal processing, and computer vision. However, minimizing submodular functions poses a number of algorithmic challenges. Recent work introduced an…
Zeroth-order methods are extensively used in machine learning applications where gradients are infeasible or expensive to compute, such as black-box attacks, reinforcement learning, and language model fine-tuning. Existing optimization…
We formulate the issue of minimality of self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space as a semi-definite problem, linking the work by Overton in [1] to the characterization of minimal hermitian matrices. This motivates us to investigate the…
In this paper, we investigate a class of submodular problems which in general are very hard. These include minimizing a submodular cost function under combinatorial constraints, which include cuts, matchings, paths, etc., optimizing a…
Suppose some objects are hidden in a finite set $S$ of hiding places which must be examined one-by-one. The cost of searching subsets of $S$ is given by a submodular function and the probability that all objects are contained in a subset is…
We study faster algorithms for producing the minimum degree ordering used to speed up Gaussian elimination. This ordering is based on viewing the non-zero elements of a symmetric positive definite matrix as edges of an undirected graph, and…
We introduce a geometric and operator-theoretic formalism viewing optimization algorithms as discrete connections on a space of update operators. Each iterative method is encoded by two coupled channels-drift and diffusion-whose algebraic…
Composite minimization is a powerful framework in large-scale convex optimization, based on decoupling of the objective function into terms with structurally different properties and allowing for more flexible algorithmic design. We…
Submodular maximization is a general optimization problem with a wide range of applications in machine learning (e.g., active learning, clustering, and feature selection). In large-scale optimization, the parallel running time of an…