English

A Faster FPTAS for the Subset-Sums Ratio Problem

Data Structures and Algorithms 2019-12-20 v1

Abstract

The Subset-Sums Ratio problem (SSR) is an optimization problem in which, given a set of integers, the goal is to find two subsets such that the ratio of their sums is as close to 1 as possible. In this paper we develop a new FPTAS for the SSR problem which builds on techniques proposed in [D. Nanongkai, Simple FPTAS for the subset-sums ratio problem, Inf. Proc. Lett. 113 (2013)]. One of the key improvements of our scheme is the use of a dynamic programming table in which one dimension represents the difference of the sums of the two subsets. This idea, together with a careful choice of a scaling parameter, yields an FPTAS that is several orders of magnitude faster than the best currently known scheme of [C. Bazgan, M. Santha, Z. Tuza, Efficient approximation algorithms for the Subset-Sums Equality problem, J. Comp. System Sci. 64 (2) (2002)].

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.09952,
  title  = {A Faster FPTAS for the Subset-Sums Ratio Problem},
  author = {Nikolaos Melissinos and Aris Pagourtzis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.09952},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:06:04.654Z