92 research outputs found
The reverse greedy algorithm for the metric k-median problem
The Reverse Greedy algorithm (RGreedy) for the k-median problem works as
follows. It starts by placing facilities on all nodes. At each step, it removes
a facility to minimize the resulting total distance from the customers to the
remaining facilities. It stops when k facilities remain. We prove that, if the
distance function is metric, then the approximation ratio of RGreedy is between
?(log n/ log log n) and O(log n).Comment: to appear in IPL. preliminary version in COCOON '0
Center-based Clustering under Perturbation Stability
Clustering under most popular objective functions is NP-hard, even to
approximate well, and so unlikely to be efficiently solvable in the worst case.
Recently, Bilu and Linial \cite{Bilu09} suggested an approach aimed at
bypassing this computational barrier by using properties of instances one might
hope to hold in practice. In particular, they argue that instances in practice
should be stable to small perturbations in the metric space and give an
efficient algorithm for clustering instances of the Max-Cut problem that are
stable to perturbations of size . In addition, they conjecture that
instances stable to as little as O(1) perturbations should be solvable in
polynomial time. In this paper we prove that this conjecture is true for any
center-based clustering objective (such as -median, -means, and
-center). Specifically, we show we can efficiently find the optimal
clustering assuming only stability to factor-3 perturbations of the underlying
metric in spaces without Steiner points, and stability to factor
perturbations for general metrics. In particular, we show for such instances
that the popular Single-Linkage algorithm combined with dynamic programming
will find the optimal clustering. We also present NP-hardness results under a
weaker but related condition
Fault Tolerant Clustering Revisited
In discrete k-center and k-median clustering, we are given a set of points P
in a metric space M, and the task is to output a set C \subseteq ? P, |C| = k,
such that the cost of clustering P using C is as small as possible. For
k-center, the cost is the furthest a point has to travel to its nearest center,
whereas for k-median, the cost is the sum of all point to nearest center
distances. In the fault-tolerant versions of these problems, we are given an
additional parameter 1 ?\leq \ell \leq ? k, such that when computing the cost
of clustering, points are assigned to their \ell-th nearest-neighbor in C,
instead of their nearest neighbor. We provide constant factor approximation
algorithms for these problems that are both conceptually simple and highly
practical from an implementation stand-point
Robust Fault Tolerant uncapacitated facility location
In the uncapacitated facility location problem, given a graph, a set of
demands and opening costs, it is required to find a set of facilities R, so as
to minimize the sum of the cost of opening the facilities in R and the cost of
assigning all node demands to open facilities. This paper concerns the robust
fault-tolerant version of the uncapacitated facility location problem (RFTFL).
In this problem, one or more facilities might fail, and each demand should be
supplied by the closest open facility that did not fail. It is required to find
a set of facilities R, so as to minimize the sum of the cost of opening the
facilities in R and the cost of assigning all node demands to open facilities
that did not fail, after the failure of up to \alpha facilities. We present a
polynomial time algorithm that yields a 6.5-approximation for this problem with
at most one failure and a 1.5 + 7.5\alpha-approximation for the problem with at
most \alpha > 1 failures. We also show that the RFTFL problem is NP-hard even
on trees, and even in the case of a single failure
Incremental Medians via Online Bidding
In the k-median problem we are given sets of facilities and customers, and
distances between them. For a given set F of facilities, the cost of serving a
customer u is the minimum distance between u and a facility in F. The goal is
to find a set F of k facilities that minimizes the sum, over all customers, of
their service costs.
Following Mettu and Plaxton, we study the incremental medians problem, where
k is not known in advance, and the algorithm produces a nested sequence of
facility sets where the kth set has size k. The algorithm is c-cost-competitive
if the cost of each set is at most c times the cost of the optimum set of size
k. We give improved incremental algorithms for the metric version: an
8-cost-competitive deterministic algorithm, a 2e ~ 5.44-cost-competitive
randomized algorithm, a (24+epsilon)-cost-competitive, poly-time deterministic
algorithm, and a (6e+epsilon ~ .31)-cost-competitive, poly-time randomized
algorithm.
The algorithm is s-size-competitive if the cost of the kth set is at most the
minimum cost of any set of size k, and has size at most s k. The optimal
size-competitive ratios for this problem are 4 (deterministic) and e
(randomized). We present the first poly-time O(log m)-size-approximation
algorithm for the offline problem and first poly-time O(log m)-size-competitive
algorithm for the incremental problem.
Our proofs reduce incremental medians to the following online bidding
problem: faced with an unknown threshold T, an algorithm submits "bids" until
it submits a bid that is at least the threshold. It pays the sum of all its
bids. We prove that folklore algorithms for online bidding are optimally
competitive.Comment: conference version appeared in LATIN 2006 as "Oblivious Medians via
Online Bidding
The Hardness of Approximation of Euclidean k-means
The Euclidean -means problem is a classical problem that has been
extensively studied in the theoretical computer science, machine learning and
the computational geometry communities. In this problem, we are given a set of
points in Euclidean space , and the goal is to choose centers in
so that the sum of squared distances of each point to its nearest center
is minimized. The best approximation algorithms for this problem include a
polynomial time constant factor approximation for general and a
-approximation which runs in time . At
the other extreme, the only known computational complexity result for this
problem is NP-hardness [ADHP'09]. The main difficulty in obtaining hardness
results stems from the Euclidean nature of the problem, and the fact that any
point in can be a potential center. This gap in understanding left open
the intriguing possibility that the problem might admit a PTAS for all .
In this paper we provide the first hardness of approximation for the
Euclidean -means problem. Concretely, we show that there exists a constant
such that it is NP-hard to approximate the -means objective
to within a factor of . We show this via an efficient reduction
from the vertex cover problem on triangle-free graphs: given a triangle-free
graph, the goal is to choose the fewest number of vertices which are incident
on all the edges. Additionally, we give a proof that the current best hardness
results for vertex cover can be carried over to triangle-free graphs. To show
this we transform , a known hard vertex cover instance, by taking a graph
product with a suitably chosen graph , and showing that the size of the
(normalized) maximum independent set is almost exactly preserved in the product
graph using a spectral analysis, which might be of independent interest
Performance Appraisal Research: A Critical Review of Work on âThe Social Context and Politics of Appraisalâ
This paper reviews existing literatures on the analysis of performance appraisal (PA) paying special attention to those which try to take into account the âsocial contextâ of appraisal systems and processes. The special place of political action within these processes is underlined and the different levels at which politics need to be considered in research are outlined. Research on politics is considered and shown to lack an adequate consideration of the social relations involved in the reciprocal interactions between PA tools and processes and users interpretation and manipulation of them.Performance appraisal; Social context; Politics
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