4,068 research outputs found
The Unreasonable Success of Local Search: Geometric Optimization
What is the effectiveness of local search algorithms for geometric problems
in the plane? We prove that local search with neighborhoods of magnitude
is an approximation scheme for the following problems in the
Euclidian plane: TSP with random inputs, Steiner tree with random inputs,
facility location (with worst case inputs), and bicriteria -median (also
with worst case inputs). The randomness assumption is necessary for TSP
The Bane of Low-Dimensionality Clustering
In this paper, we give a conditional lower bound of on
running time for the classic k-median and k-means clustering objectives (where
n is the size of the input), even in low-dimensional Euclidean space of
dimension four, assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH). We also
consider k-median (and k-means) with penalties where each point need not be
assigned to a center, in which case it must pay a penalty, and extend our lower
bound to at least three-dimensional Euclidean space.
This stands in stark contrast to many other geometric problems such as the
traveling salesman problem, or computing an independent set of unit spheres.
While these problems benefit from the so-called (limited) blessing of
dimensionality, as they can be solved in time or
in d dimensions, our work shows that widely-used clustering
objectives have a lower bound of , even in dimension four.
We complete the picture by considering the two-dimensional case: we show that
there is no algorithm that solves the penalized version in time less than
, and provide a matching upper bound of .
The main tool we use to establish these lower bounds is the placement of
points on the moment curve, which takes its inspiration from constructions of
point sets yielding Delaunay complexes of high complexity
On Variants of k-means Clustering
\textit{Clustering problems} often arise in the fields like data mining,
machine learning etc. to group a collection of objects into similar groups with
respect to a similarity (or dissimilarity) measure. Among the clustering
problems, specifically \textit{-means} clustering has got much attention
from the researchers. Despite the fact that -means is a very well studied
problem its status in the plane is still an open problem. In particular, it is
unknown whether it admits a PTAS in the plane. The best known approximation
bound in polynomial time is 9+\eps.
In this paper, we consider the following variant of -means. Given a set
of points in and a real , find a finite set of
points in that minimizes the quantity . For any fixed dimension , we design a local
search PTAS for this problem. We also give a "bi-criterion" local search
algorithm for -means which uses (1+\eps)k centers and yields a solution
whose cost is at most (1+\eps) times the cost of an optimal -means
solution. The algorithm runs in polynomial time for any fixed dimension.
The contribution of this paper is two fold. On the one hand, we are being
able to handle the square of distances in an elegant manner, which yields near
optimal approximation bound. This leads us towards a better understanding of
the -means problem. On the other hand, our analysis of local search might
also be useful for other geometric problems. This is important considering that
very little is known about the local search method for geometric approximation.Comment: 15 page
Approximate Clustering via Metric Partitioning
In this paper we consider two metric covering/clustering problems -
\textit{Minimum Cost Covering Problem} (MCC) and -clustering. In the MCC
problem, we are given two point sets (clients) and (servers), and a
metric on . We would like to cover the clients by balls centered at
the servers. The objective function to minimize is the sum of the -th
power of the radii of the balls. Here is a parameter of the
problem (but not of a problem instance). MCC is closely related to the
-clustering problem. The main difference between -clustering and MCC is
that in -clustering one needs to select balls to cover the clients.
For any \eps > 0, we describe quasi-polynomial time (1 + \eps)
approximation algorithms for both of the problems. However, in case of
-clustering the algorithm uses (1 + \eps)k balls. Prior to our work, a
and a approximation were achieved by
polynomial-time algorithms for MCC and -clustering, respectively, where is an absolute constant. These two problems are thus interesting examples of
metric covering/clustering problems that admit (1 + \eps)-approximation
(using (1+\eps)k balls in case of -clustering), if one is willing to
settle for quasi-polynomial time. In contrast, for the variant of MCC where
is part of the input, we show under standard assumptions that no
polynomial time algorithm can achieve an approximation factor better than
for .Comment: 19 page
Minimum-Cost Coverage of Point Sets by Disks
We consider a class of geometric facility location problems in which the goal
is to determine a set X of disks given by their centers (t_j) and radii (r_j)
that cover a given set of demand points Y in the plane at the smallest possible
cost. We consider cost functions of the form sum_j f(r_j), where f(r)=r^alpha
is the cost of transmission to radius r. Special cases arise for alpha=1 (sum
of radii) and alpha=2 (total area); power consumption models in wireless
network design often use an exponent alpha>2. Different scenarios arise
according to possible restrictions on the transmission centers t_j, which may
be constrained to belong to a given discrete set or to lie on a line, etc. We
obtain several new results, including (a) exact and approximation algorithms
for selecting transmission points t_j on a given line in order to cover demand
points Y in the plane; (b) approximation algorithms (and an algebraic
intractability result) for selecting an optimal line on which to place
transmission points to cover Y; (c) a proof of NP-hardness for a discrete set
of transmission points in the plane and any fixed alpha>1; and (d) a
polynomial-time approximation scheme for the problem of computing a minimum
cost covering tour (MCCT), in which the total cost is a linear combination of
the transmission cost for the set of disks and the length of a tour/path that
connects the centers of the disks.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Latex, to appear in ACM Symposium on
Computational Geometry 200
Coresets-Methods and History: A Theoreticians Design Pattern for Approximation and Streaming Algorithms
We present a technical survey on the state of the art approaches in data reduction and the coreset framework. These include geometric decompositions, gradient methods, random sampling, sketching and random projections. We further outline their importance for the design of streaming algorithms and give a brief overview on lower bounding techniques
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