A Deterministic Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme For Counting Integer Knapsack Solutions Made Easy

Given n elements with nonnegative integer weights w=(w_1,...,w_n), an integer capacity C and positive integer ranges u=(u_1,...,u_n), we consider the counting version of the classic integer knapsack problem: find the number of distinct multisets whose weights add up to at most C. We give a deterministic algorithm that estimates the number of solutions to within relative error epsilon in time polynomial in n, log U and 1/epsilon, where U=max_i u_i. More precisely, our algorithm runs in O((n^3 log^2 U)/epsilon) log (n log U)/epsilon) time. This is an improvement of n^2 and 1/epsilon (up to log terms) over the best known deterministic algorithm by Gopalan et al. [FOCS, (2011), pp. 817-826]. Our algorithm is relatively simple, and its analysis is rather elementary. Our results are achieved by means of a careful formulation of the problem as a dynamic program, using the notion of binding constraints

Counting approximately-shortest paths in directed acyclic graphs

Given a directed acyclic graph with positive edge-weights, two vertices s and t, and a threshold-weight L, we present a fully-polynomial time approximation-scheme for the problem of counting the s-t paths of length at most L. We extend the algorithm for the case of two (or more) instances of the same problem. That is, given two graphs that have the same vertices and edges and differ only in edge-weights, and given two threshold-weights L_1 and L_2, we show how to approximately count the s-t paths that have length at most L_1 in the first graph and length at most L_2 in the second graph. We believe that our algorithms should find application in counting approximate solutions of related optimization problems, where finding an (optimum) solution can be reduced to the computation of a shortest path in a purpose-built auxiliary graph

A Faster FPTAS for #Knapsack

Given a set W = {w_1,..., w_n} of non-negative integer weights and an integer C, the #Knapsack problem asks to count the number of distinct subsets of W whose total weight is at most C. In the more general integer version of the problem, the subsets are multisets. That is, we are also given a set {u_1,..., u_n} and we are allowed to take up to u_i items of weight w_i. We present a deterministic FPTAS for #Knapsack running in O(n^{2.5}epsilon^{-1.5}log(n epsilon^{-1})log (n epsilon)) time. The previous best deterministic algorithm [FOCS 2011] runs in O(n^3 epsilon^{-1} log(n epsilon^{-1})) time (see also [ESA 2014] for a logarithmic factor improvement). The previous best randomized algorithm [STOC 2003] runs in O(n^{2.5} sqrt{log (n epsilon^{-1})} + epsilon^{-2} n^2) time. Therefore, for the case of constant epsilon, we close the gap between the O~(n^{2.5}) randomized algorithm and the O~(n^3) deterministic algorithm. For the integer version with U = max_i {u_i}, we present a deterministic FPTAS running in O(n^{2.5}epsilon^{-1.5}log(n epsilon^{-1} log U)log (n epsilon) log^2 U) time. The previous best deterministic algorithm [TCS 2016] runs in O(n^3 epsilon^{-1}log(n epsilon^{-1} log U) log^2 U) time

Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization via Poisson Approximation

We study several stochastic combinatorial problems, including the expected utility maximization problem, the stochastic knapsack problem and the stochastic bin packing problem. A common technical challenge in these problems is to optimize some function of the sum of a set of random variables. The difficulty is mainly due to the fact that the probability distribution of the sum is the convolution of a set of distributions, which is not an easy objective function to work with. To tackle this difficulty, we introduce the Poisson approximation technique. The technique is based on the Poisson approximation theorem discovered by Le Cam, which enables us to approximate the distribution of the sum of a set of random variables using a compound Poisson distribution. We first study the expected utility maximization problem introduced recently [Li and Despande, FOCS11]. For monotone and Lipschitz utility functions, we obtain an additive PTAS if there is a multidimensional PTAS for the multi-objective version of the problem, strictly generalizing the previous result. For the stochastic bin packing problem (introduced in [Kleinberg, Rabani and Tardos, STOC97]), we show there is a polynomial time algorithm which uses at most the optimal number of bins, if we relax the size of each bin and the overflow probability by eps. For stochastic knapsack, we show a 1+eps-approximation using eps extra capacity, even when the size and reward of each item may be correlated and cancelations of items are allowed. This generalizes the previous work [Balghat, Goel and Khanna, SODA11] for the case without correlation and cancelation. Our algorithm is also simpler. We also present a factor 2+eps approximation algorithm for stochastic knapsack with cancelations. the current known approximation factor of 8 [Gupta, Krishnaswamy, Molinaro and Ravi, FOCS11].Comment: 42 pages, 1 figure, Preliminary version appears in the Proceeding of the 45th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC13