4,619 research outputs found
The Knapsack Problem with Neighbour Constraints
We study a constrained version of the knapsack problem in which dependencies
between items are given by the adjacencies of a graph. In the 1-neighbour
knapsack problem, an item can be selected only if at least one of its
neighbours is also selected. In the all-neighbours knapsack problem, an item
can be selected only if all its neighbours are also selected. We give
approximation algorithms and hardness results when the nodes have both uniform
and arbitrary weight and profit functions, and when the dependency graph is
directed and undirected.Comment: Full version of IWOCA 2011 pape
Robust and MaxMin Optimization under Matroid and Knapsack Uncertainty Sets
Consider the following problem: given a set system (U,I) and an edge-weighted
graph G = (U, E) on the same universe U, find the set A in I such that the
Steiner tree cost with terminals A is as large as possible: "which set in I is
the most difficult to connect up?" This is an example of a max-min problem:
find the set A in I such that the value of some minimization (covering) problem
is as large as possible.
In this paper, we show that for certain covering problems which admit good
deterministic online algorithms, we can give good algorithms for max-min
optimization when the set system I is given by a p-system or q-knapsacks or
both. This result is similar to results for constrained maximization of
submodular functions. Although many natural covering problems are not even
approximately submodular, we show that one can use properties of the online
algorithm as a surrogate for submodularity.
Moreover, we give stronger connections between max-min optimization and
two-stage robust optimization, and hence give improved algorithms for robust
versions of various covering problems, for cases where the uncertainty sets are
given by p-systems and q-knapsacks.Comment: 17 pages. Preliminary version combining this paper and
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1045 appeared in ICALP 201
Budget-Feasible Mechanism Design for Non-Monotone Submodular Objectives: Offline and Online
The framework of budget-feasible mechanism design studies procurement
auctions where the auctioneer (buyer) aims to maximize his valuation function
subject to a hard budget constraint. We study the problem of designing truthful
mechanisms that have good approximation guarantees and never pay the
participating agents (sellers) more than the budget. We focus on the case of
general (non-monotone) submodular valuation functions and derive the first
truthful, budget-feasible and -approximate mechanisms that run in
polynomial time in the value query model, for both offline and online auctions.
Prior to our work, the only -approximation mechanism known for
non-monotone submodular objectives required an exponential number of value
queries.
At the heart of our approach lies a novel greedy algorithm for non-monotone
submodular maximization under a knapsack constraint. Our algorithm builds two
candidate solutions simultaneously (to achieve a good approximation), yet
ensures that agents cannot jump from one solution to the other (to implicitly
enforce truthfulness). Ours is the first mechanism for the problem
where---crucially---the agents are not ordered with respect to their marginal
value per cost. This allows us to appropriately adapt these ideas to the online
setting as well.
To further illustrate the applicability of our approach, we also consider the
case where additional feasibility constraints are present. We obtain
-approximation mechanisms for both monotone and non-monotone submodular
objectives, when the feasible solutions are independent sets of a -system.
With the exception of additive valuation functions, no mechanisms were known
for this setting prior to our work. Finally, we provide lower bounds suggesting
that, when one cares about non-trivial approximation guarantees in polynomial
time, our results are asymptotically best possible.Comment: Accepted to EC 201
Pattern Matching and Consensus Problems on Weighted Sequences and Profiles
We study pattern matching problems on two major representations of uncertain
sequences used in molecular biology: weighted sequences (also known as position
weight matrices, PWM) and profiles (i.e., scoring matrices). In the simple
version, in which only the pattern or only the text is uncertain, we obtain
efficient algorithms with theoretically-provable running times using a
variation of the lookahead scoring technique. We also consider a general
variant of the pattern matching problems in which both the pattern and the text
are uncertain. Central to our solution is a special case where the sequences
have equal length, called the consensus problem. We propose algorithms for the
consensus problem parameterized by the number of strings that match one of the
sequences. As our basic approach, a careful adaptation of the classic
meet-in-the-middle algorithm for the knapsack problem is used. On the lower
bound side, we prove that our dependence on the parameter is optimal up to
lower-order terms conditioned on the optimality of the original algorithm for
the knapsack problem.Comment: 22 page
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