3,167 research outputs found
On largest volume simplices and sub-determinants
We show that the problem of finding the simplex of largest volume in the
convex hull of points in can be approximated with a factor
of in polynomial time. This improves upon the previously best
known approximation guarantee of by Khachiyan. On the other hand,
we show that there exists a constant such that this problem cannot be
approximated with a factor of , unless . % This improves over the
inapproximability that was previously known. Our hardness result holds
even if , in which case there exists a \bar c\,^{d}-approximation
algorithm that relies on recent sampling techniques, where is again a
constant. We show that similar results hold for the problem of finding the
largest absolute value of a subdeterminant of a matrix
The computational complexity of convex bodies
We discuss how well a given convex body B in a real d-dimensional vector
space V can be approximated by a set X for which the membership question:
``given an x in V, does x belong to X?'' can be answered efficiently (in time
polynomial in d). We discuss approximations of a convex body by an ellipsoid,
by an algebraic hypersurface, by a projection of a polytope with a controlled
number of facets, and by a section of the cone of positive semidefinite
quadratic forms. We illustrate some of the results on the Traveling Salesman
Polytope, an example of a complicated convex body studied in combinatorial
optimization.Comment: 24 page
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