6 research outputs found
Decomposition of Trees and Paths via Correlation
We study the problem of decomposing (clustering) a tree with respect to costs
attributed to pairs of nodes, so as to minimize the sum of costs for those
pairs of nodes that are in the same component (cluster). For the general case
and for the special case of the tree being a star, we show that the problem is
NP-hard. For the special case of the tree being a path, this problem is known
to be polynomial time solvable. We characterize several classes of facets of
the combinatorial polytope associated with a formulation of this clustering
problem in terms of lifted multicuts. In particular, our results yield a
complete totally dual integral (TDI) description of the lifted multicut
polytope for paths, which establishes a connection to the combinatorial
properties of alternative formulations such as set partitioning.Comment: v2 is a complete revisio
Quadratization of Symmetric Pseudo-Boolean Functions
A pseudo-Boolean function is a real-valued function
of binary variables; that is, a mapping from
to . For a pseudo-Boolean function on
, we say that is a quadratization of if is a
quadratic polynomial depending on and on auxiliary binary variables
such that for
all . By means of quadratizations, minimization of is
reduced to minimization (over its extended set of variables) of the quadratic
function . This is of some practical interest because minimization of
quadratic functions has been thoroughly studied for the last few decades, and
much progress has been made in solving such problems exactly or heuristically.
A related paper \cite{ABCG} initiated a systematic study of the minimum number
of auxiliary -variables required in a quadratization of an arbitrary
function (a natural question, since the complexity of minimizing the
quadratic function depends, among other factors, on the number of
binary variables). In this paper, we determine more precisely the number of
auxiliary variables required by quadratizations of symmetric pseudo-Boolean
functions , those functions whose value depends only on the Hamming
weight of the input (the number of variables equal to ).Comment: 17 page
A polynomial-time algorithm for optimization of quadratic pseudo-boolean functions
We develop a polynomial-time algorithm to minimize pseudo-Boolean functions. The computational complexity is O(n □(15/2)), although very conservative, it is su_cient to prove that this minimization problem is in the class P. A direct application of the algorithm is the 3-SAT problem, which is also guaranteed to be in the class P with a computational complexity of order O(n □(45/2)). The algorithm was implemented in MATLAB and checked by generating one million matrices of arbitrary dimension up to 24 with random entries in the range [-50; 50]. All the experiments were successful
School Choice as a One-Sided Matching Problem: Cardinal Utilities and Optimization
The school choice problem concerns the design and implementation of matching mechanisms that produce school assignments for students within a given public school district. Previously considered criteria for evaluating proposed mechanisms such as stability, strategyproofness and Pareto efficiency do not always translate into desirable student assignments. In this note, we explore a class of one-sided, cardinal utility maximizing matching mechanisms focused exclusively on student preferences. We adapt a well-known combinatorial optimization technique (the Hungarian algorithm) as the kernel of this class of matching mechanisms. We find that, while such mechanisms can be adapted to meet desirable criteria not met by any previously employed mechanism in the school choice literature, they are not strategyproof. We discuss the practical implications and limitations of our approach at the end of the article