28 research outputs found
Approximability of Adaptive Seeding under Knapsack Constraints
Adapting Seeding is a key algorithmic challenge of influence maximization in social networks. One seeks to select among certain available nodes in a network, and then, adaptively, among neighbors of those nodes as they become available, in order to maximize influence in the overall network. Despite recent strong approximation results [25, 1], very little is known about the problem when nodes can take on different activation costs. Surprisingly, designing adaptive seeding algorithms that can appropriately incentivize users with heterogeneous activation costs introduces fundamental challenges that do not exist in the simplified version of the problem. In this paper we study the approximability of adaptive seeding algorithms that incentivize nodes with heterogeneous activation costs. We first show a tight inapproximability result which applies even for a very restricted version of the problem. We then complement this inapprox-imability with a constant-factor approximation for general submodular functions, showing that the difficulties caused by the stochastic nature of the problem can be overcome. In addition, we show stronger approximation results for additive influence functions and cases where the nodesâ activation costs constitute a small fraction of the budget
Locally Adaptive Optimization: Adaptive Seeding for Monotone Submodular Functions
The Adaptive Seeding problem is an algorithmic challenge motivated by
influence maximization in social networks: One seeks to select among certain
accessible nodes in a network, and then select, adaptively, among neighbors of
those nodes as they become accessible in order to maximize a global objective
function. More generally, adaptive seeding is a stochastic optimization
framework where the choices in the first stage affect the realizations in the
second stage, over which we aim to optimize.
Our main result is a -approximation for the adaptive seeding
problem for any monotone submodular function. While adaptive policies are often
approximated via non-adaptive policies, our algorithm is based on a novel
method we call \emph{locally-adaptive} policies. These policies combine a
non-adaptive global structure, with local adaptive optimizations. This method
enables the -approximation for general monotone submodular functions
and circumvents some of the impossibilities associated with non-adaptive
policies.
We also introduce a fundamental problem in submodular optimization that may
be of independent interest: given a ground set of elements where every element
appears with some small probability, find a set of expected size at most
that has the highest expected value over the realization of the elements. We
show a surprising result: there are classes of monotone submodular functions
(including coverage) that can be approximated almost optimally as the
probability vanishes. For general monotone submodular functions we show via a
reduction from \textsc{Planted-Clique} that approximations for this problem are
not likely to be obtainable. This optimization problem is an important tool for
adaptive seeding via non-adaptive policies, and its hardness motivates the
introduction of \emph{locally-adaptive} policies we use in the main result
Generalized Budgeted Submodular Set Function Maximization
In this paper we consider a generalization of the well-known budgeted maximum coverage problem. We are given a ground set of elements and a set of bins. The goal is to find a subset of elements along with an associated set of bins, such that the overall cost is at most a given budget, and the profit is maximized. Each bin has its own cost and the cost of each element depends on its associated bin. The profit is measured by a monotone submodular function over the elements.
We first present an algorithm that guarantees an approximation factor of 1/2(1-1/e^alpha), where alpha <= 1 is the approximation factor of an algorithm for a sub-problem. We give two polynomial-time algorithms to solve this sub-problem. The first one gives us alpha=1- epsilon if the costs satisfies a specific condition, which is fulfilled in several relevant cases, including the unitary costs case and the problem of maximizing a monotone submodular function under a knapsack constraint. The second one guarantees alpha=1-1/e-epsilon for the general case. The gap between our approximation guarantees and the known inapproximability bounds is 1/2.
We extend our algorithm to a bi-criterion approximation algorithm in which we are allowed to spend an extra budget up to a factor beta >= 1 to guarantee a 1/2(1-1/e^(alpha beta))-approximation. If we set beta=1/(alpha)ln (1/(2 epsilon)), the algorithm achieves an approximation factor of 1/2-epsilon, for any arbitrarily small epsilon>0
Adaptive Seeding in Social Networks
The algorithmic challenge of maximizing information diffusion through word-of-mouth processes in social networks has been heavily studied in the past decade. While there has been immense progress and an impressive arsenal of techniques has been developed, the algorithmic frameworks make idealized assumptions regarding access to the network that can often result in poor performance of state-of-the-art techniques. In this paper we introduce a new framework which we call Adaptive Seeding. The framework is a two-stage stochastic optimization model designed to leverage the potential that typically lies in neighboring nodes of arbitrary samples of social networks. Our main result is an algorithm which provides a constant factor approximation to the optimal adaptive policy for any influence function in the Triggering model
Combining Traditional Marketing and Viral Marketing with Amphibious Influence Maximization
In this paper, we propose the amphibious influence maximization (AIM) model
that combines traditional marketing via content providers and viral marketing
to consumers in social networks in a single framework. In AIM, a set of content
providers and consumers form a bipartite network while consumers also form
their social network, and influence propagates from the content providers to
consumers and among consumers in the social network following the independent
cascade model. An advertiser needs to select a subset of seed content providers
and a subset of seed consumers, such that the influence from the seed providers
passing through the seed consumers could reach a large number of consumers in
the social network in expectation.
We prove that the AIM problem is NP-hard to approximate to within any
constant factor via a reduction from Feige's k-prover proof system for 3-SAT5.
We also give evidence that even when the social network graph is trivial (i.e.
has no edges), a polynomial time constant factor approximation for AIM is
unlikely. However, when we assume that the weighted bi-adjacency matrix that
describes the influence of content providers on consumers is of constant rank,
a common assumption often used in recommender systems, we provide a
polynomial-time algorithm that achieves approximation ratio of
for any (polynomially small) . Our
algorithmic results still hold for a more general model where cascades in
social network follow a general monotone and submodular function.Comment: An extended abstract appeared in the Proceedings of the 16th ACM
Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), 201
Effectiveness of Diffusing Information through a Social Network in Multiple Phases
We study the effectiveness of using multiple phases for maximizing the extent
of information diffusion through a social network, and present insights while
considering various aspects. In particular, we focus on the independent cascade
model with the possibility of adaptively selecting seed nodes in multiple
phases based on the observed diffusion in preceding phases, and conduct a
detailed simulation study on real-world network datasets and various values of
seeding budgets. We first present a negative result that more phases do not
guarantee a better spread, however the adaptability advantage of more phases
generally leads to a better spread in practice, as observed on real-world
datasets. We study how diffusing in multiple phases affects the mean and
standard deviation of the distribution representing the extent of diffusion. We
then study how the number of phases impacts the effectiveness of multiphase
diffusion, how the diffusion progresses phase-by-phase, and what is an optimal
way to split the total seeding budget across phases. Our experiments suggest a
significant gain when we move from single phase to two phases, and an
appreciable gain when we further move to three phases, but the marginal gain
thereafter is usually not very significant. Our main conclusion is that, given
the number of phases, an optimal way to split the budget across phases is such
that the number of nodes influenced in each phase is almost the same.Comment: This paper is under revie
Optimal multiphase investment strategies for influencing opinions in a social network
International audienceWe study the problem of two competing camps aiming to maximize the adoption of their respective opinions, by optimally investing in nodes of a social network in multiple phases. The final opinion of a node in a phase acts as its biased opinion in the following phase. Using an extension of Friedkin-Johnsen model, we formulate the camps' utility functions, which we show to involve what can be interpreted as multiphase Katz centrality. We hence present optimal investment strategies of the camps, and the loss incurred if myopic strategy is employed. Simulations affirm that nodes attributing higher weightage to bias necessitate higher investment in initial phase. The extended version of this paper analyzes a setting where a camp's influence on a node depends on the node's bias; we show existence and polynomial time computability of Nash equilibrium
Improved Approximation Factor for Adaptive Influence Maximization via Simple Greedy Strategies
In the adaptive influence maximization problem, we are given a social network and a budget k, and we iteratively select k nodes, called seeds, in order to maximize the expected number of nodes that are reached by an influence cascade that they generate according to a stochastic model for influence diffusion. The decision on the next seed to select is based on the observed cascade of previously selected seeds. We focus on the myopic feedback model, in which we can only observe which neighbors of previously selected seeds have been influenced and on the independent cascade model, where each edge is associated with an independent probability of diffusing influence. While adaptive policies are strictly stronger than non-adaptive ones, in which all the seeds are selected beforehand, the latter are much easier to design and implement and they provide good approximation factors if the adaptivity gap, the ratio between the adaptive and the non-adaptive optima, is small. Previous works showed that the adaptivity gap is at most 4, and that simple adaptive or non-adaptive greedy algorithms guarantee an approximation of 1/4 (1-1/e) ? 0.158 for the adaptive optimum. This is the best approximation factor known so far for the adaptive influence maximization problem with myopic feedback.
In this paper, we directly analyze the approximation factor of the non-adaptive greedy algorithm, without passing through the adaptivity gap, and show an improved bound of 1/2 (1-1/e) ? 0.316. Therefore, the adaptivity gap is at most 2e/e-1 ? 3.164. To prove these bounds, we introduce a new approach to relate the greedy non-adaptive algorithm to the adaptive optimum. The new approach does not rely on multi-linear extensions or random walks on optimal decision trees, which are commonly used techniques in the field. We believe that it is of independent interest and may be used to analyze other adaptive optimization problems. Finally, we also analyze the adaptive greedy algorithm, and show that guarantees an improved approximation factor of 1-1/(?{e)}? 0.393
Streaming Algorithms for Submodular Function Maximization
We consider the problem of maximizing a nonnegative submodular set function
subject to a -matchoid
constraint in the single-pass streaming setting. Previous work in this context
has considered streaming algorithms for modular functions and monotone
submodular functions. The main result is for submodular functions that are {\em
non-monotone}. We describe deterministic and randomized algorithms that obtain
a -approximation using -space, where is
an upper bound on the cardinality of the desired set. The model assumes value
oracle access to and membership oracles for the matroids defining the
-matchoid constraint.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures, extended abstract to appear in ICALP 201