2,099 research outputs found
Bin Packing and Related Problems: General Arc-flow Formulation with Graph Compression
We present an exact method, based on an arc-flow formulation with side
constraints, for solving bin packing and cutting stock problems --- including
multi-constraint variants --- by simply representing all the patterns in a very
compact graph. Our method includes a graph compression algorithm that usually
reduces the size of the underlying graph substantially without weakening the
model. As opposed to our method, which provides strong models, conventional
models are usually highly symmetric and provide very weak lower bounds.
Our formulation is equivalent to Gilmore and Gomory's, thus providing a very
strong linear relaxation. However, instead of using column-generation in an
iterative process, the method constructs a graph, where paths from the source
to the target node represent every valid packing pattern.
The same method, without any problem-specific parameterization, was used to
solve a large variety of instances from several different cutting and packing
problems. In this paper, we deal with vector packing, graph coloring, bin
packing, cutting stock, cardinality constrained bin packing, cutting stock with
cutting knife limitation, cutting stock with binary patterns, bin packing with
conflicts, and cutting stock with binary patterns and forbidden pairs. We
report computational results obtained with many benchmark test data sets, all
of them showing a large advantage of this formulation with respect to the
traditional ones
Multiwinner Elections with Diversity Constraints
We develop a model of multiwinner elections that combines performance-based
measures of the quality of the committee (such as, e.g., Borda scores of the
committee members) with diversity constraints. Specifically, we assume that the
candidates have certain attributes (such as being a male or a female, being
junior or senior, etc.) and the goal is to elect a committee that, on the one
hand, has as high a score regarding a given performance measure, but that, on
the other hand, meets certain requirements (e.g., of the form "at least
of the committee members are junior candidates and at least are
females"). We analyze the computational complexity of computing winning
committees in this model, obtaining polynomial-time algorithms (exact and
approximate) and NP-hardness results. We focus on several natural classes of
voting rules and diversity constraints.Comment: A short version of this paper appears in the proceedings of AAAI-1
Stochastic Budget Optimization in Internet Advertising
Internet advertising is a sophisticated game in which the many advertisers
"play" to optimize their return on investment. There are many "targets" for the
advertisements, and each "target" has a collection of games with a potentially
different set of players involved. In this paper, we study the problem of how
advertisers allocate their budget across these "targets". In particular, we
focus on formulating their best response strategy as an optimization problem.
Advertisers have a set of keywords ("targets") and some stochastic information
about the future, namely a probability distribution over scenarios of cost vs
click combinations. This summarizes the potential states of the world assuming
that the strategies of other players are fixed. Then, the best response can be
abstracted as stochastic budget optimization problems to figure out how to
spread a given budget across these keywords to maximize the expected number of
clicks.
We present the first known non-trivial poly-logarithmic approximation for
these problems as well as the first known hardness results of getting better
than logarithmic approximation ratios in the various parameters involved. We
also identify several special cases of these problems of practical interest,
such as with fixed number of scenarios or with polynomial-sized parameters
related to cost, which are solvable either in polynomial time or with improved
approximation ratios. Stochastic budget optimization with scenarios has
sophisticated technical structure. Our approximation and hardness results come
from relating these problems to a special type of (0/1, bipartite) quadratic
programs inherent in them. Our research answers some open problems raised by
the authors in (Stochastic Models for Budget Optimization in Search-Based
Advertising, Algorithmica, 58 (4), 1022-1044, 2010).Comment: FINAL versio
Throughput Maximization in the Speed-Scaling Setting
We are given a set of jobs and a single processor that can vary its speed
dynamically. Each job is characterized by its processing requirement
(work) , its release date and its deadline . We are also given
a budget of energy and we study the scheduling problem of maximizing the
throughput (i.e. the number of jobs which are completed on time). We propose a
dynamic programming algorithm that solves the preemptive case of the problem,
i.e. when the execution of the jobs may be interrupted and resumed later, in
pseudo-polynomial time. Our algorithm can be adapted for solving the weighted
version of the problem where every job is associated with a weight and
the objective is the maximization of the sum of the weights of the jobs that
are completed on time. Moreover, we provide a strongly polynomial time
algorithm to solve the non-preemptive unweighed case when the jobs have the
same processing requirements. For the weighted case, our algorithm can be
adapted for solving the non-preemptive version of the problem in
pseudo-polynomial time.Comment: submitted to SODA 201
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
- …