Complexity of Token Swapping and its Variants

In the Token Swapping problem we are given a graph with a token placed on each vertex. Each token has exactly one destination vertex, and we try to move all the tokens to their destinations, using the minimum number of swaps, i.e., operations of exchanging the tokens on two adjacent vertices. As the main result of this paper, we show that Token Swapping is $W[1]$-hard parameterized by the length $k$ of a shortest sequence of swaps. In fact, we prove that, for any computable function $f$, it cannot be solved in time $f(k)n^{o(k / \log k)}$ where $n$ is the number of vertices of the input graph, unless the ETH fails. This lower bound almost matches the trivial $n^{O(k)}$-time algorithm. We also consider two generalizations of the Token Swapping, namely Colored Token Swapping (where the tokens have different colors and tokens of the same color are indistinguishable), and Subset Token Swapping (where each token has a set of possible destinations). To complement the hardness result, we prove that even the most general variant, Subset Token Swapping, is FPT in nowhere-dense graph classes. Finally, we consider the complexities of all three problems in very restricted classes of graphs: graphs of bounded treewidth and diameter, stars, cliques, and paths, trying to identify the borderlines between polynomial and NP-hard cases.Comment: 23 pages, 7 Figure

Axiomatic Characterization of Data-Driven Influence Measures for Classification

We study the following problem: given a labeled dataset and a specific datapoint x, how did the i-th feature influence the classification for x? We identify a family of numerical influence measures - functions that, given a datapoint x, assign a numeric value phi_i(x) to every feature i, corresponding to how altering i's value would influence the outcome for x. This family, which we term monotone influence measures (MIM), is uniquely derived from a set of desirable properties, or axioms. The MIM family constitutes a provably sound methodology for measuring feature influence in classification domains; the values generated by MIM are based on the dataset alone, and do not make any queries to the classifier. While this requirement naturally limits the scope of our framework, we demonstrate its effectiveness on data

Parameterized Approximation Schemes using Graph Widths

Combining the techniques of approximation algorithms and parameterized complexity has long been considered a promising research area, but relatively few results are currently known. In this paper we study the parameterized approximability of a number of problems which are known to be hard to solve exactly when parameterized by treewidth or clique-width. Our main contribution is to present a natural randomized rounding technique that extends well-known ideas and can be used for both of these widths. Applying this very generic technique we obtain approximation schemes for a number of problems, evading both polynomial-time inapproximability and parameterized intractability bounds

Stable Roommate Problem with Diversity Preferences

In the multidimensional stable roommate problem, agents have to be allocated to rooms and have preferences over sets of potential roommates. We study the complexity of finding good allocations of agents to rooms under the assumption that agents have diversity preferences [Bredereck et al., 2019]: each agent belongs to one of the two types (e.g., juniors and seniors, artists and engineers), and agents' preferences over rooms depend solely on the fraction of agents of their own type among their potential roommates. We consider various solution concepts for this setting, such as core and exchange stability, Pareto optimality and envy-freeness. On the negative side, we prove that envy-free, core stable or (strongly) exchange stable outcomes may fail to exist and that the associated decision problems are NP-complete. On the positive side, we show that these problems are in FPT with respect to the room size, which is not the case for the general stable roommate problem. Moreover, for the classic setting with rooms of size two, we present a linear-time algorithm that computes an outcome that is core and exchange stable as well as Pareto optimal. Many of our results for the stable roommate problem extend to the stable marriage problem.Comment: accepted to IJCAI'2

Parameterized Complexity of Maximum Happy Set and Densest k-Subgraph

We present fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithms for two problems, Maximum Happy Set (MaxHS) and Maximum Edge Happy Set (MaxEHS)--also known as Densest k-Subgraph. Given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, MaxHS asks for a set $S$ of $k$ vertices such that the number of $\textit{happy vertices}$ with respect to $S$ is maximized, where a vertex $v$ is happy if $v$ and all its neighbors are in $S$. We show that MaxHS can be solved in time $\mathcal{O}\left(2^\textsf{mw} \cdot \textsf{mw} \cdot k^2 \cdot |V(G)|\right)$ and $\mathcal{O}\left(8^\textsf{cw} \cdot k^2 \cdot |V(G)|\right)$, where $\textsf{mw}$ and $\textsf{cw}$ denote the $\textit{modular-width}$ and the $\textit{clique-width}$ of $G$, respectively. This resolves the open questions posed in literature. The MaxEHS problem is an edge-variant of MaxHS, where we maximize the number of $\textit{happy edges}$, the edges whose endpoints are in $S$. In this paper we show that MaxEHS can be solved in time $f(\textsf{nd})\cdot|V(G)|^{\mathcal{O}(1)}$ and $\mathcal{O}\left(2^{\textsf{cd}}\cdot k^2 \cdot |V(G)|\right)$, where $\textsf{nd}$ and $\textsf{cd}$ denote the $\textit{neighborhood diversity}$ and the $\textit{cluster deletion number}$ of $G$, respectively, and $f$ is some computable function. This result implies that MaxEHS is also fixed-parameter tractable by $\textit{twin cover number}$

Constrained Signaling in Auction Design

We consider the problem of an auctioneer who faces the task of selling a good (drawn from a known distribution) to a set of buyers, when the auctioneer does not have the capacity to describe to the buyers the exact identity of the good that he is selling. Instead, he must come up with a constrained signalling scheme: a (non injective) mapping from goods to signals, that satisfies the constraints of his setting. For example, the auctioneer may be able to communicate only a bounded length message for each good, or he might be legally constrained in how he can advertise the item being sold. Each candidate signaling scheme induces an incomplete-information game among the buyers, and the goal of the auctioneer is to choose the signaling scheme and accompanying auction format that optimizes welfare. In this paper, we use techniques from submodular function maximization and no-regret learning to give algorithms for computing constrained signaling schemes for a variety of constrained signaling problems