17 research outputs found
Approximating -Median via Pseudo-Approximation
We present a novel approximation algorithm for -median that achieves an
approximation guarantee of
, improving upon the decade-old ratio of .
Our approach is based on two components, each of which, we believe, is of
independent interest.
First, we show that in order to give an -approximation algorithm for
-median, it is sufficient to give a \emph{pseudo-approximation algorithm}
that finds an -approximate solution by opening facilities.
This is a rather surprising result as there exist instances for which opening
facilities may lead to a significant smaller cost than if only
facilities were opened.
Second, we give such a pseudo-approximation algorithm with . Prior to our work, it was not even known whether opening
facilities would help improve the approximation ratio.Comment: 18 page
Hardness of Approximation for Euclidean k-Median
The Euclidean k-median problem is defined in the following manner: given a set ? of n points in d-dimensional Euclidean space ?^d, and an integer k, find a set C ? ?^d of k points (called centers) such that the cost function ?(C,?) ? ?_{x ? ?} min_{c ? C} ?x-c?? is minimized. The Euclidean k-means problem is defined similarly by replacing the distance with squared Euclidean distance in the cost function. Various hardness of approximation results are known for the Euclidean k-means problem [Pranjal Awasthi et al., 2015; Euiwoong Lee et al., 2017; Vincent Cohen{-}Addad and {Karthik {C. S.}}, 2019]. However, no hardness of approximation result was known for the Euclidean k-median problem. In this work, assuming the unique games conjecture (UGC), we provide the hardness of approximation result for the Euclidean k-median problem in O(log k) dimensional space. This solves an open question posed explicitly in the work of Awasthi et al. [Pranjal Awasthi et al., 2015].
Furthermore, we study the hardness of approximation for the Euclidean k-means/k-median problems in the bi-criteria setting where an algorithm is allowed to choose more than k centers. That is, bi-criteria approximation algorithms are allowed to output ? k centers (for constant ? > 1) and the approximation ratio is computed with respect to the optimal k-means/k-median cost. We show the hardness of bi-criteria approximation result for the Euclidean k-median problem for any ? < 1.015, assuming UGC. We also show a similar hardness of bi-criteria approximation result for the Euclidean k-means problem with a stronger bound of ? < 1.28, again assuming UGC
The Non-Uniform k-Center Problem
In this paper, we introduce and study the Non-Uniform k-Center problem
(NUkC). Given a finite metric space and a collection of balls of radii
, the NUkC problem is to find a placement of their
centers on the metric space and find the minimum dilation , such that
the union of balls of radius around the th center covers
all the points in . This problem naturally arises as a min-max vehicle
routing problem with fleets of different speeds.
The NUkC problem generalizes the classic -center problem when all the
radii are the same (which can be assumed to be after scaling). It also
generalizes the -center with outliers (kCwO) problem when there are
balls of radius and balls of radius . There are -approximation
and -approximation algorithms known for these problems respectively; the
former is best possible unless P=NP and the latter remains unimproved for 15
years.
We first observe that no -approximation is to the optimal dilation is
possible unless P=NP, implying that the NUkC problem is more non-trivial than
the above two problems. Our main algorithmic result is an
-bi-criteria approximation result: we give an -approximation
to the optimal dilation, however, we may open centers of each
radii. Our techniques also allow us to prove a simple (uni-criteria), optimal
-approximation to the kCwO problem improving upon the long-standing
-factor. Our main technical contribution is a connection between the NUkC
problem and the so-called firefighter problems on trees which have been studied
recently in the TCS community.Comment: Adjusted the figur
Constant-Factor Approximation Algorithms for the Parity-Constrained Facility Location Problem
Facility location is a prominent optimization problem that has inspired a large quantity of both theoretical and practical studies in combinatorial optimization. Although the problem has been investigated under various settings reflecting typical structures within the optimization problems of practical interest, little is known on how the problem behaves in conjunction with parity constraints. This shortfall of understanding was rather discouraging when we consider the central role of parity in the field of combinatorics.
In this paper, we present the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for the facility location problem with parity constraints. We are given as the input a metric on a set of facilities and clients, the opening cost of each facility, and the parity requirement - odd, even, or unconstrained - of every facility in this problem. The objective is to open a subset of facilities and assign every client to an open facility so as to minimize the sum of the total opening costs and the assignment distances, but subject to the condition that the number of clients assigned to each open facility must have the same parity as its requirement.
Although the unconstrained facility location problem as a relaxation for this parity-constrained generalization has unbounded gap, we demonstrate that it yields a structured solution whose parity violation can be corrected at small cost. This correction is prescribed by a T-join on an auxiliary graph constructed by the algorithm. This auxiliary graph does not satisfy the triangle inequality, but we show that a carefully chosen set of shortcutting operations leads to a cheap and sparse T-join. Finally, we bound the correction cost by exhibiting a combinatorial multi-step construction of an upper bound
The Container Selection Problem
We introduce and study a network resource management problem that is a special case of non-metric k-median, naturally arising in cross platform scheduling and cloud computing. In the continuous d-dimensional container selection problem, we are given a set C of input points in d-dimensional Euclidean space, for some d >= 2, and a budget k. An input point p can be assigned to a "container point" c only if c dominates p in every dimension. The assignment cost is then equal to the L1-norm of the container point. The goal is to find k container points in the d-dimensional space, such that the total assignment cost for all input points is minimized. The discrete variant of the problem has one key distinction, namely, the container points must be chosen from a given set F of points.
For the continuous version, we obtain a polynomial time approximation scheme for any fixed dimension d>= 2. On the negative side, we show that the problem is NP-hard for any d>=3. We further show that the discrete version is significantly harder, as it is NP-hard to approximate without violating the budget k in any dimension d>=3. Thus, we focus on obtaining bi-approximation algorithms. For d=2, the bi-approximation guarantee is (1+epsilon,3), i.e., for any epsilon>0, our scheme outputs a solution of size 3k and cost at most (1+epsilon) times the optimum. For fixed d>2, we present a (1+epsilon,O((1/epsilon)log k)) bi-approximation algorithm
Scheduling with Outliers
In classical scheduling problems, we are given jobs and machines, and have to
schedule all the jobs to minimize some objective function. What if each job has
a specified profit, and we are no longer required to process all jobs -- we can
schedule any subset of jobs whose total profit is at least a (hard) target
profit requirement, while still approximately minimizing the objective
function?
We refer to this class of problems as scheduling with outliers. This model
was initiated by Charikar and Khuller (SODA'06) on the minimum max-response
time in broadcast scheduling. We consider three other well-studied scheduling
objectives: the generalized assignment problem, average weighted completion
time, and average flow time, and provide LP-based approximation algorithms for
them. For the minimum average flow time problem on identical machines, we give
a logarithmic approximation algorithm for the case of unit profits based on
rounding an LP relaxation; we also show a matching integrality gap. For the
average weighted completion time problem on unrelated machines, we give a
constant factor approximation. The algorithm is based on randomized rounding of
the time-indexed LP relaxation strengthened by the knapsack-cover inequalities.
For the generalized assignment problem with outliers, we give a simple
reduction to GAP without outliers to obtain an algorithm whose makespan is
within 3 times the optimum makespan, and whose cost is at most (1 + \epsilon)
times the optimal cost.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure
Lotsize optimization leading to a -median problem with cardinalities
We consider the problem of approximating the branch and size dependent demand
of a fashion discounter with many branches by a distributing process being
based on the branch delivery restricted to integral multiples of lots from a
small set of available lot-types. We propose a formalized model which arises
from a practical cooperation with an industry partner. Besides an integer
linear programming formulation and a primal heuristic for this problem we also
consider a more abstract version which we relate to several other classical
optimization problems like the p-median problem, the facility location problem
or the matching problem.Comment: 14 page