Related papers: An $\Omega(n \log n)$ Randomized Lower Bound for C…
We consider the problem of fairly dividing a heterogeneous cake between a number of players with different tastes. In this setting, it is known that fairness requirements may result in a suboptimal division from the social welfare…
We initiate the study of multi-layered cake cutting with the goal of fairly allocating multiple divisible resources (layers of a cake) among a set of agents. The key requirement is that each agent can only utilize a single resource at each…
We prove several new tight distributed lower bounds for classic symmetry breaking graph problems. As a basic tool, we first provide a new insightful proof that any deterministic distributed algorithm that computes a $\Delta$-coloring on…
We improve on random sampling techniques for approximately solving problems that involve cuts and flows in graphs. We give a near-linear-time construction that transforms any graph on n vertices into an O(n\log n)-edge graph on the same…
The query model offers a concrete setting where quantum algorithms are provably superior to randomized algorithms. Beautiful results by Bernstein-Vazirani, Simon, Aaronson, and others presented partial Boolean functions that can be computed…
We continue the study of selection and sorting of $n$ numbers under the adversarial comparator model, where comparisons can be adversarially tampered with if the arguments are sufficiently close. We derive a randomized sorting algorithm…
There has been a recent explosion in the size of stored data, partially due to advances in storage technology, and partially due to the growing popularity of cloud-computing and the vast quantities of data generated. This motivates the need…
We describe an algorithm for solving an important geometric problem arising in computer-aided manufacturing. When cutting away a region from a solid piece of material -- such as steel, wood, ceramics, or plastic -- using a rough tool in a…
Randomized rounding is a technique that was originally used to approximate hard offline discrete optimization problems from a mathematical programming relaxation. Since then it has also been used to approximately solve sequential stochastic…
We consider streaming algorithms for approximating a product of input probabilities up to multiplicative error of $1-\epsilon$. It is shown that every randomized streaming algorithm for this problem needs space $\Omega(\log n + \log b -…
Many combinatorial optimization problems admit a maximin fairness variant, where the aim is to find a distribution over possible solutions which maximizes an expected worst-case outcome. However, the support for an optimal distribution may…
Consider n straight line cuts of a circular pizza made so as to maximize the number of pieces. We investigate how fair such a maximal division may be and how many slices are obtained if the cuts are successfully made with a certain…
We study the problem of \emph{local search} on a graph. Given a real-valued black-box function f on the graph's vertices, this is the problem of determining a local minimum of f--a vertex v for which f(v) is no more than f evaluated at any…
We study the problem of cutting a length-$n$ string of positive real numbers into $k$ pieces so that every piece has sum at least $b$. The problem can also be phrased as transforming such a string into a new one by merging adjacent numbers.…
We consider the \emph{approximate minimum selection} problem in presence of \emph{independent random comparison faults}. This problem asks to select one of the smallest $k$ elements in a linearly-ordered collection of $n$ elements by only…
We provide a simple new randomized contraction approach to the global minimum cut problem for simple undirected graphs. The contractions exploit 2-out edge sampling from each vertex rather than the standard uniform edge sampling. We…
We study the space complexity of sketching cuts and Laplacian quadratic forms of graphs. We show that any data structure which approximately stores the sizes of all cuts in an undirected graph on $n$ vertices up to a $1+\epsilon$ error must…
A frequently studied performance measure in online optimization is competitive analysis. It corresponds to the worst-case ratio, over all possible inputs of an algorithm, between the performance of the algorithm and the optimal offline…
We address a version of the set-cover problem where we do not know the sets initially (and hence referred to as covert) but we can query an element to find out which sets contain this element as well as query a set to know the elements. We…
We investigate the number of maximal independent set queries required to reconstruct the edges of a hidden graph. We show that randomised adaptive algorithms need at least $\Omega(\Delta^2 \log(n / \Delta) / \log \Delta)$ queries to…