22,065 research outputs found
Relaxing the Irrevocability Requirement for Online Graph Algorithms
Online graph problems are considered in models where the irrevocability
requirement is relaxed. Motivated by practical examples where, for example,
there is a cost associated with building a facility and no extra cost
associated with doing it later, we consider the Late Accept model, where a
request can be accepted at a later point, but any acceptance is irrevocable.
Similarly, we also consider a Late Reject model, where an accepted request can
later be rejected, but any rejection is irrevocable (this is sometimes called
preemption). Finally, we consider the Late Accept/Reject model, where late
accepts and rejects are both allowed, but any late reject is irrevocable. For
Independent Set, the Late Accept/Reject model is necessary to obtain a constant
competitive ratio, but for Vertex Cover the Late Accept model is sufficient and
for Minimum Spanning Forest the Late Reject model is sufficient. The Matching
problem has a competitive ratio of 2, but in the Late Accept/Reject model, its
competitive ratio is 3/2
The Advice Complexity of a Class of Hard Online Problems
The advice complexity of an online problem is a measure of how much knowledge
of the future an online algorithm needs in order to achieve a certain
competitive ratio. Using advice complexity, we define the first online
complexity class, AOC. The class includes independent set, vertex cover,
dominating set, and several others as complete problems. AOC-complete problems
are hard, since a single wrong answer by the online algorithm can have
devastating consequences. For each of these problems, we show that
bits of advice are
necessary and sufficient (up to an additive term of ) to achieve a
competitive ratio of .
The results are obtained by introducing a new string guessing problem related
to those of Emek et al. (TCS 2011) and B\"ockenhauer et al. (TCS 2014). It
turns out that this gives a powerful but easy-to-use method for providing both
upper and lower bounds on the advice complexity of an entire class of online
problems, the AOC-complete problems.
Previous results of Halld\'orsson et al. (TCS 2002) on online independent
set, in a related model, imply that the advice complexity of the problem is
. Our results improve on this by providing an exact formula for
the higher-order term. For online disjoint path allocation, B\"ockenhauer et
al. (ISAAC 2009) gave a lower bound of and an upper bound of
on the advice complexity. We improve on the upper bound by a
factor of . For the remaining problems, no bounds on their advice
complexity were previously known.Comment: Full paper to appear in Theory of Computing Systems. A preliminary
version appeared in STACS 201
Max-Min Greedy Matching
A bipartite graph G(U,V;E) that admits a perfect matching is given. One player imposes a permutation pi over V, the other player imposes a permutation sigma over U. In the greedy matching algorithm, vertices of U arrive in order sigma and each vertex is matched to the highest (under pi) yet unmatched neighbor in V (or left unmatched, if all its neighbors are already matched). The obtained matching is maximal, thus matches at least a half of the vertices. The max-min greedy matching problem asks: suppose the first (max) player reveals pi, and the second (min) player responds with the worst possible sigma for pi, does there exist a permutation pi ensuring to match strictly more than a half of the vertices? Can such a permutation be computed in polynomial time?
The main result of this paper is an affirmative answer for these questions: we show that there exists a polytime algorithm to compute pi for which for every sigma at least rho > 0.51 fraction of the vertices of V are matched. We provide additional lower and upper bounds for special families of graphs, including regular and Hamiltonian graphs. Our solution solves an open problem regarding the welfare guarantees attainable by pricing in sequential markets with binary unit-demand valuations
A Bicriteria Approximation for the Reordering Buffer Problem
In the reordering buffer problem (RBP), a server is asked to process a
sequence of requests lying in a metric space. To process a request the server
must move to the corresponding point in the metric. The requests can be
processed slightly out of order; in particular, the server has a buffer of
capacity k which can store up to k requests as it reads in the sequence. The
goal is to reorder the requests in such a manner that the buffer constraint is
satisfied and the total travel cost of the server is minimized. The RBP arises
in many applications that require scheduling with a limited buffer capacity,
such as scheduling a disk arm in storage systems, switching colors in paint
shops of a car manufacturing plant, and rendering 3D images in computer
graphics.
We study the offline version of RBP and develop bicriteria approximations.
When the underlying metric is a tree, we obtain a solution of cost no more than
9OPT using a buffer of capacity 4k + 1 where OPT is the cost of an optimal
solution with buffer capacity k. Constant factor approximations were known
previously only for the uniform metric (Avigdor-Elgrabli et al., 2012). Via
randomized tree embeddings, this implies an O(log n) approximation to cost and
O(1) approximation to buffer size for general metrics. Previously the best
known algorithm for arbitrary metrics by Englert et al. (2007) provided an
O(log^2 k log n) approximation without violating the buffer constraint.Comment: 13 page
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