Related papers: The Minimum Expectation Selection Problem
Given a linear system, we consider the problem of finding a small set of variables to affect with an input so that the resulting system is controllable. We show that this problem is NP-hard; indeed, we show that even approximating the…
The EM (Expectation-Maximization) algorithm is regarded as an MM (Majorization-Minimization) algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation of statistical models. Expanding this view, this paper demonstrates that by choosing an appropriate…
We show that any submodular minimization (SM) problem defined on a linear constraint set with constraints having up to two variables per inequality, are 2-approximable in polynomial time. If the constraints are monotone (the two variables…
In this paper, we present approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems under probabilistic constraints. Specifically, we focus on stochastic variants of two important combinatorial optimization problems: the k-center…
Submodular maximization generalizes many fundamental problems in discrete optimization, including Max-Cut in directed/undirected graphs, maximum coverage, maximum facility location and marketing over social networks. In this paper we…
We consider an expected-value ranking and selection (R&S) problem where all k solutions' simulation outputs depend on a common parameter whose uncertainty can be modeled by a distribution. We define the most probable best (MPB) to be the…
Hypothesis Selection is a fundamental distribution learning problem where given a comparator-class $Q=\{q_1,\ldots, q_n\}$ of distributions, and a sampling access to an unknown target distribution $p$, the goal is to output a distribution…
In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm for the minimum dominating set problem. For some especial networks, we prove theoretically that the achieved answer by our proposed algorithm is a constant approximation factor of the exact…
In this paper, we introduce the Maximum Matrix Contraction problem, where we aim to contract as much as possible a binary matrix in order to maximize its density. We study the complexity and the polynomial approximability of the problem.…
Estimating a constrained relation is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Special cases are classification (the problem of estimating a map from a set of to-be-classified elements to a set of labels), clustering (the problem of…
The subset sum problem is known to be an NP-hard problem in the field of computer science with the fastest known approach having a run-time complexity of $O(2^{0.3113n})$. A modified version of this problem is known as the perfect sum…
When, in terms of the number of data points, the size of a dataset exceeds available computing resources, or when labeling is expensive, an attractive solution consists of selecting only some of the data points (subdata) for further…
Computing and storing probabilities is a hard problem as soon as one has to deal with complex distributions over multiple random variables. The problem of efficient representation of probability distributions is central in term of…
The problem of minimizing convex functionals of probability distributions is solved under the assumption that the density of every distribution is bounded from above and below. A system of sufficient and necessary first-order optimality…
In this paper the problem of selecting $p$ out of $n$ available items is discussed, such that their total cost is minimized. We assume that costs are not known exactly, but stem from a set of possible outcomes. Robust recoverable and…
We consider discrete optimization problems with interval uncertatinty of objective function coefficients. The interval uncertainty models measurements errors. A pos\-sible optimal solution is a solution that is optimal for some possible…
Let $N_n=\{1,2,...,n\}$. Elements are drawn from the set $N_n$ with replacement, assuming that each element has probability $1/n$ of being drawn. We determine the limiting distributions for the waiting time until the given portion of pairs…
We introduce a new concept of approximation applicable to decision problems and functions, inspired by Bayesian probability. From the perspective of a Bayesian reasoner with limited computational resources, the answer to a problem that…
We study a two-dimensional generalization of the classical Bin Packing problem, denoted as 2D Demand Bin Packing. In this context, each bin is a horizontal timeline, and rectangular tasks (representing electric appliances or computational…
An NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem $\Pi$ is said to have an {\em approximation threshold} if there is some $t$ such that the optimal value of $\Pi$ can be approximated in polynomial time within a ratio of $t$, and it is NP-hard…