26 research outputs found
Approximating Bin Packing within O(log OPT * log log OPT) bins
For bin packing, the input consists of n items with sizes s_1,...,s_n in
[0,1] which have to be assigned to a minimum number of bins of size 1. The
seminal Karmarkar-Karp algorithm from '82 produces a solution with at most OPT
+ O(log^2 OPT) bins.
We provide the first improvement in now 3 decades and show that one can find
a solution of cost OPT + O(log OPT * log log OPT) in polynomial time. This is
achieved by rounding a fractional solution to the Gilmore-Gomory LP relaxation
using the Entropy Method from discrepancy theory. The result is constructive
via algorithms of Bansal and Lovett-Meka
On largest volume simplices and sub-determinants
We show that the problem of finding the simplex of largest volume in the
convex hull of points in can be approximated with a factor
of in polynomial time. This improves upon the previously best
known approximation guarantee of by Khachiyan. On the other hand,
we show that there exists a constant such that this problem cannot be
approximated with a factor of , unless . % This improves over the
inapproximability that was previously known. Our hardness result holds
even if , in which case there exists a \bar c\,^{d}-approximation
algorithm that relies on recent sampling techniques, where is again a
constant. We show that similar results hold for the problem of finding the
largest absolute value of a subdeterminant of a matrix
New developments in iterated rounding
Iterated rounding is a relatively recent technique in algorithm design, that despite its simplicity has led to several remarkable new results and also simpler proofs of many previous results. We will briefly survey some applications of the method, including some recent developments and giving a high level overview of the ideas
An Algorithm for Koml\'os Conjecture Matching Banaszczyk's bound
We consider the problem of finding a low discrepancy coloring for sparse set
systems where each element lies in at most t sets. We give an efficient
algorithm that finds a coloring with discrepancy O((t log n)^{1/2}), matching
the best known non-constructive bound for the problem due to Banaszczyk. The
previous algorithms only achieved an O(t^{1/2} log n) bound. The result also
extends to the more general Koml\'{o}s setting and gives an algorithmic
O(log^{1/2} n) bound
Improved Algorithmic Bounds for Discrepancy of Sparse Set Systems
We consider the problem of finding a low discrepancy coloring for sparse set
systems where each element lies in at most sets. We give an algorithm that
finds a coloring with discrepancy where is the
maximum cardinality of a set. This improves upon the previous constructive
bound of based on algorithmic variants of the partial
coloring method, and for small (e.g.) comes close to
the non-constructive bound due to Banaszczyk. Previously,
no algorithmic results better than were known even for . Our method is quite robust and we give several refinements and
extensions. For example, the coloring we obtain satisfies the stronger
size-sensitive property that each set in the set system incurs an discrepancy. Another variant can be used to
essentially match Banaszczyk's bound for a wide class of instances even where
is arbitrarily large. Finally, these results also extend directly to the
more general Koml\'{o}s setting
Approximating Hereditary Discrepancy via Small Width Ellipsoids
The Discrepancy of a hypergraph is the minimum attainable value, over
two-colorings of its vertices, of the maximum absolute imbalance of any
hyperedge. The Hereditary Discrepancy of a hypergraph, defined as the maximum
discrepancy of a restriction of the hypergraph to a subset of its vertices, is
a measure of its complexity. Lovasz, Spencer and Vesztergombi (1986) related
the natural extension of this quantity to matrices to rounding algorithms for
linear programs, and gave a determinant based lower bound on the hereditary
discrepancy. Matousek (2011) showed that this bound is tight up to a
polylogarithmic factor, leaving open the question of actually computing this
bound. Recent work by Nikolov, Talwar and Zhang (2013) showed a polynomial time
-approximation to hereditary discrepancy, as a by-product
of their work in differential privacy. In this paper, we give a direct simple
-approximation algorithm for this problem. We show that up to
this approximation factor, the hereditary discrepancy of a matrix is
characterized by the optimal value of simple geometric convex program that
seeks to minimize the largest norm of any point in a ellipsoid
containing the columns of . This characterization promises to be a useful
tool in discrepancy theory