184 research outputs found
Geometric lattice structure of covering-based rough sets through matroids
Covering-based rough set theory is a useful tool to deal with inexact,
uncertain or vague knowledge in information systems. Geometric lattice has
widely used in diverse fields, especially search algorithm design which plays
important role in covering reductions. In this paper, we construct four
geometric lattice structures of covering-based rough sets through matroids, and
compare their relationships. First, a geometric lattice structure of
covering-based rough sets is established through the transversal matroid
induced by the covering, and its characteristics including atoms, modular
elements and modular pairs are studied. We also construct a one-to-one
correspondence between this type of geometric lattices and transversal matroids
in the context of covering-based rough sets. Second, sufficient and necessary
conditions for three types of covering upper approximation operators to be
closure operators of matroids are presented. We exhibit three types of matroids
through closure axioms, and then obtain three geometric lattice structures of
covering-based rough sets. Third, these four geometric lattice structures are
compared. Some core concepts such as reducible elements in covering-based rough
sets are investigated with geometric lattices. In a word, this work points out
an interesting view, namely geometric lattice, to study covering-based rough
sets
Advances on Matroid Secretary Problems: Free Order Model and Laminar Case
The most well-known conjecture in the context of matroid secretary problems
claims the existence of a constant-factor approximation applicable to any
matroid. Whereas this conjecture remains open, modified forms of it were shown
to be true, when assuming that the assignment of weights to the secretaries is
not adversarial but uniformly random (Soto [SODA 2011], Oveis Gharan and
Vondr\'ak [ESA 2011]). However, so far, there was no variant of the matroid
secretary problem with adversarial weight assignment for which a
constant-factor approximation was found. We address this point by presenting a
9-approximation for the \emph{free order model}, a model suggested shortly
after the introduction of the matroid secretary problem, and for which no
constant-factor approximation was known so far. The free order model is a
relaxed version of the original matroid secretary problem, with the only
difference that one can choose the order in which secretaries are interviewed.
Furthermore, we consider the classical matroid secretary problem for the
special case of laminar matroids. Only recently, a constant-factor
approximation has been found for this case, using a clever but rather involved
method and analysis (Im and Wang, [SODA 2011]) that leads to a
16000/3-approximation. This is arguably the most involved special case of the
matroid secretary problem for which a constant-factor approximation is known.
We present a considerably simpler and stronger -approximation, based on reducing the problem to a matroid secretary
problem on a partition matroid
Prophet Inequalities with Limited Information
In the classical prophet inequality, a gambler observes a sequence of
stochastic rewards and must decide, for each reward ,
whether to keep it and stop the game or to forfeit the reward forever and
reveal the next value . The gambler's goal is to obtain a constant
fraction of the expected reward that the optimal offline algorithm would get.
Recently, prophet inequalities have been generalized to settings where the
gambler can choose items, and, more generally, where he can choose any
independent set in a matroid. However, all the existing algorithms require the
gambler to know the distribution from which the rewards are
drawn.
The assumption that the gambler knows the distribution from which
are drawn is very strong. Instead, we work with the much simpler
assumption that the gambler only knows a few samples from this distribution. We
construct the first single-sample prophet inequalities for many settings of
interest, whose guarantees all match the best possible asymptotically,
\emph{even with full knowledge of the distribution}. Specifically, we provide a
novel single-sample algorithm when the gambler can choose any elements
whose analysis is based on random walks with limited correlation. In addition,
we provide a black-box method for converting specific types of solutions to the
related \emph{secretary problem} to single-sample prophet inequalities, and
apply it to several existing algorithms. Finally, we provide a constant-sample
prophet inequality for constant-degree bipartite matchings.
We apply these results to design the first posted-price and multi-dimensional
auction mechanisms with limited information in settings with asymmetric
bidders
On the Combinatorics of Locally Repairable Codes via Matroid Theory
This paper provides a link between matroid theory and locally repairable
codes (LRCs) that are either linear or more generally almost affine. Using this
link, new results on both LRCs and matroid theory are derived. The parameters
of LRCs are generalized to matroids, and the matroid
analogue of the generalized Singleton bound in [P. Gopalan et al., "On the
locality of codeword symbols," IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory] for linear LRCs is
given for matroids. It is shown that the given bound is not tight for certain
classes of parameters, implying a nonexistence result for the corresponding
locally repairable almost affine codes, that are coined perfect in this paper.
Constructions of classes of matroids with a large span of the parameters
and the corresponding local repair sets are given. Using
these matroid constructions, new LRCs are constructed with prescribed
parameters. The existence results on linear LRCs and the nonexistence results
on almost affine LRCs given in this paper strengthen the nonexistence and
existence results on perfect linear LRCs given in [W. Song et al., "Optimal
locally repairable codes," IEEE J. Sel. Areas Comm.].Comment: 48 pages. Submitted for publication. In this version: The text has
been edited to improve the readability. Parameter d for matroids is now
defined by the use of the rank function instead of the dual matroid. Typos
are corrected. Section III is divided into two parts, and some numberings of
theorems etc. have been change
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