Related papers: On the expected value of the minimum assignment

Let $M$ be a random $m \times n$ matrix with binary entries and i.i.d. rows. The weight (i.e., number of ones) of a row has a specified probability distribution, with the row chosen uniformly at random given its weight. Let $N(n,m)$ denote…

The Nisan-Ronen conjecture states that no truthful mechanism for makespan-minimization when allocating $m$ tasks to $n$ unrelated machines can have approximation ratio less than $n$. Over more than two decades since its formulation, little…

Let $n>1$ and $k>0$ be fixed integers. A matrix is said to be level if all its column sums are equal. A level matrix with $m$ rows is called reducible if we can delete $j$ rows, $0<j<m$, so that the remaining matrix is level. We ask if…

A zero-one matrix is a matrix with entries from $\{0, 1\}$. We study monoids containing only such matrices. A finite set of zero-one matrices generating such a monoid can be seen as the matrix representation of an unambiguous finite…

This paper investigates the minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation of x, given the observation y = Hx+n, when x and n are independent and Gaussian Mixture (GM) distributed. The introduction of GM distributions, represents a…

Let $N$ be a finite set, let $p \in (0,1)$, and let $N_p$ denote a random binomial subset of $N$ where every element of $N$ is taken to belong to the subset independently with probability $p$ . This defines a product measure $\mu_p$ on the…

We show that several versions of Floyd and Rivest's improved algorithm Select for finding the $k$th smallest of $n$ elements require at most $n+\min\{k,n-k\}+O(n^{1/2}\ln^{1/2}n)$ comparisons on average and with high probability. This…

Random matrix theory (RMT) is based on two assumptions: (1) matrix-element independence, and (2) base invariance. Most of the proposed generalizations keep the first assumption and violate the second. Recently, several authors presented…

The problem of completing a large matrix with lots of missing entries has received widespread attention in the last couple of decades. Two popular approaches to the matrix completion problem are based on singular value thresholding and…

In the Min $k$-Cut problem, input is an edge weighted graph $G$ and an integer $k$, and the task is to partition the vertex set into $k$ non-empty sets, such that the total weight of the edges with endpoints in different parts is minimized.…

A general lower bound is developed for the minimax risk when estimating an arbitrary functional. The bound is based on testing two composite hypotheses and is shown to be effective in estimating the nonsmooth functional…

Let $\delta>1$ and $\beta>0$ be some real numbers. We prove that there are positive $u,v,N_0$ depending only on $\beta$ and $\delta$ with the following property: for any $N,n$ such that $N\ge \max(N_0,\delta n)$, any $N\times n$ random…

A fooling-set matrix has nonzero diagonal, but at least one in every pair of diagonally opposite entries is 0. Dietzfelbinger et al. '96 proved that the rank of such a matrix is at least $\sqrt n$. It is known that the bound is tight (up to…

Matrix completion, i.e., the exact and provable recovery of a low-rank matrix from a small subset of its elements, is currently only known to be possible if the matrix satisfies a restrictive structural constraint---known as {\em…

The posterior distribution of the number of components k in a finite mixture satisfies a set of inequality constraints. The result holds irrespective of the parametric form of the mixture components and under assumptions on the prior…

A remarkable conjecture of Feige (2006) asserts that for any collection of $n$ independent non-negative random variables $X_1, X_2, \dots, X_n$, each with expectation at most $1$, $$ \mathbb{P}(X < \mathbb{E}[X] + 1) \geq \frac{1}{e}, $$…

Lower bounds for the average probability of error of estimating a hidden variable X given an observation of a correlated random variable Y, and Fano's inequality in particular, play a central role in information theory. In this paper, we…

We show that the well-known Konig's Min-Max Theorem (KMM), a fundamental result in combinatorial matrix theory, can be proven in the first order theory $\LA$ with induction restricted to $\Sigma_1^B$ formulas. This is an improvement over…

We examine the open problem of finding the shortest string that contains each of the n! permutations of n symbols as contiguous substrings (i.e., the shortest superpermutation on n symbols). It has been conjectured that the shortest…

Let $\KX =K\langle X_1,\ldots ,X_n\rangle$ be the free algebra generated by $X=\{ X_1,\ldots ,X_n\}$ over a field $K$. It is shown that with respect to any weighted $\mathbb{N}$-gradation attached to $\KX$, minimal homogeneous generating…