17 research outputs found
Solving a "Hard" Problem to Approximate an "Easy" One: Heuristics for Maximum Matchings and Maximum Traveling Salesman Problems
We consider geometric instances of the Maximum Weighted Matching Problem
(MWMP) and the Maximum Traveling Salesman Problem (MTSP) with up to 3,000,000
vertices. Making use of a geometric duality relationship between MWMP, MTSP,
and the Fermat-Weber-Problem (FWP), we develop a heuristic approach that yields
in near-linear time solutions as well as upper bounds. Using various
computational tools, we get solutions within considerably less than 1% of the
optimum.
An interesting feature of our approach is that, even though an FWP is hard to
compute in theory and Edmonds' algorithm for maximum weighted matching yields a
polynomial solution for the MWMP, the practical behavior is just the opposite,
and we can solve the FWP with high accuracy in order to find a good heuristic
solution for the MWMP.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, Latex, to appear in Journal of Experimental
Algorithms, 200
Subsampling in Smoothed Range Spaces
We consider smoothed versions of geometric range spaces, so an element of the
ground set (e.g. a point) can be contained in a range with a non-binary value
in . Similar notions have been considered for kernels; we extend them to
more general types of ranges. We then consider approximations of these range
spaces through -nets and -samples (aka
-approximations). We characterize when size bounds for
-samples on kernels can be extended to these more general
smoothed range spaces. We also describe new generalizations for -nets to these range spaces and show when results from binary range spaces can
carry over to these smoothed ones.Comment: This is the full version of the paper which appeared in ALT 2015. 16
pages, 3 figures. In Algorithmic Learning Theory, pp. 224-238. Springer
International Publishing, 201
New variants of Perfect Non-crossing Matchings
Given a set of points in the plane, we are interested in matching them with
straight line segments. We focus on perfect (all points are matched)
non-crossing (no two edges intersect) matchings. Apart from the well known
MinMax variation, where the length of the longest edge is minimized, we extend
work by looking into different optimization variants such as MaxMin, MinMin,
and MaxMax. We consider both the monochromatic and bichromatic versions of
these problems and by employing diverse techniques we provide efficient
algorithms for various input point configurations
On the power of the semi-separated pair decomposition
A Semi-Separated Pair Decomposition (SSPD), with parameter s > 1, of a set is a set {(A i ,B i )} of pairs of subsets of S such that for each i, there are balls and containing A i and B i respectively such that min ( radius ) , radius ), and for any two points p, q S there is a unique index i such that p A i and q B i or vice-versa. In this paper, we use the SSPD to obtain the following results: First, we consider the construction of geometric t-spanners in the context of imprecise points and we prove that any set of n imprecise points, modeled as pairwise disjoint balls, admits a t-spanner with edges which can be computed in time. If all balls have the same radius, the number of edges reduces to . Secondly, for a set of n points in the plane, we design a query data structure for half-plane closest-pair queries that can be built in time using space and answers a query in time, for any ε> 0. By reducing the preprocessing time to and using space, the query can be answered in time. Moreover, we improve the preprocessing time of an existing axis-parallel rectangle closest-pair query data structure from quadratic to near-linear. Finally, we revisit some previously studied problems, namely spanners for complete k-partite graphs and l
Triangulating the Square and Squaring the Triangle: Quadtrees and Delaunay Triangulations are Equivalent
We show that Delaunay triangulations and compressed quadtrees are equivalent
structures. More precisely, we give two algorithms: the first computes a
compressed quadtree for a planar point set, given the Delaunay triangulation;
the second finds the Delaunay triangulation, given a compressed quadtree. Both
algorithms run in deterministic linear time on a pointer machine. Our work
builds on and extends previous results by Krznaric and Levcopolous and Buchin
and Mulzer. Our main tool for the second algorithm is the well-separated pair
decomposition(WSPD), a structure that has been used previously to find
Euclidean minimum spanning trees in higher dimensions (Eppstein). We show that
knowing the WSPD (and a quadtree) suffices to compute a planar Euclidean
minimum spanning tree (EMST) in linear time. With the EMST at hand, we can find
the Delaunay triangulation in linear time.
As a corollary, we obtain deterministic versions of many previous algorithms
related to Delaunay triangulations, such as splitting planar Delaunay
triangulations, preprocessing imprecise points for faster Delaunay computation,
and transdichotomous Delaunay triangulations.Comment: 37 pages, 13 figures, full version of a paper that appeared in SODA
201