39,203 research outputs found
An FPT Algorithm for Directed Spanning k-Leaf
An out-branching of a directed graph is a rooted spanning tree with all arcs
directed outwards from the root. We consider the problem of deciding whether a
given directed graph D has an out-branching with at least k leaves (Directed
Spanning k-Leaf). We prove that this problem is fixed parameter tractable, when
k is chosen as the parameter. Previously this was only known for restricted
classes of directed graphs.
The main new ingredient in our approach is a lemma that shows that given a
locally optimal out-branching of a directed graph in which every arc is part of
at least one out-branching, either an out-branching with at least k leaves
exists, or a path decomposition with width O(k^3) can be found. This enables a
dynamic programming based algorithm of running time 2^{O(k^3 \log k)} n^{O(1)},
where n=|V(D)|.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
Improving Optimization Bounds using Machine Learning: Decision Diagrams meet Deep Reinforcement Learning
Finding tight bounds on the optimal solution is a critical element of
practical solution methods for discrete optimization problems. In the last
decade, decision diagrams (DDs) have brought a new perspective on obtaining
upper and lower bounds that can be significantly better than classical bounding
mechanisms, such as linear relaxations. It is well known that the quality of
the bounds achieved through this flexible bounding method is highly reliant on
the ordering of variables chosen for building the diagram, and finding an
ordering that optimizes standard metrics is an NP-hard problem. In this paper,
we propose an innovative and generic approach based on deep reinforcement
learning for obtaining an ordering for tightening the bounds obtained with
relaxed and restricted DDs. We apply the approach to both the Maximum
Independent Set Problem and the Maximum Cut Problem. Experimental results on
synthetic instances show that the deep reinforcement learning approach, by
achieving tighter objective function bounds, generally outperforms ordering
methods commonly used in the literature when the distribution of instances is
known. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first paper to apply
machine learning to directly improve relaxation bounds obtained by
general-purpose bounding mechanisms for combinatorial optimization problems.Comment: Accepted and presented at AAAI'1
Are there any good digraph width measures?
Several different measures for digraph width have appeared in the last few
years. However, none of them shares all the "nice" properties of treewidth:
First, being \emph{algorithmically useful} i.e. admitting polynomial-time
algorithms for all \MS1-definable problems on digraphs of bounded width. And,
second, having nice \emph{structural properties} i.e. being monotone under
taking subdigraphs and some form of arc contractions. As for the former,
(undirected) \MS1 seems to be the least common denominator of all reasonably
expressive logical languages on digraphs that can speak about the edge/arc
relation on the vertex set.The latter property is a necessary condition for a
width measure to be characterizable by some version of the cops-and-robber game
characterizing the ordinary treewidth. Our main result is that \emph{any
reasonable} algorithmically useful and structurally nice digraph measure cannot
be substantially different from the treewidth of the underlying undirected
graph. Moreover, we introduce \emph{directed topological minors} and argue that
they are the weakest useful notion of minors for digraphs
On The Power of Tree Projections: Structural Tractability of Enumerating CSP Solutions
The problem of deciding whether CSP instances admit solutions has been deeply
studied in the literature, and several structural tractability results have
been derived so far. However, constraint satisfaction comes in practice as a
computation problem where the focus is either on finding one solution, or on
enumerating all solutions, possibly projected to some given set of output
variables. The paper investigates the structural tractability of the problem of
enumerating (possibly projected) solutions, where tractability means here
computable with polynomial delay (WPD), since in general exponentially many
solutions may be computed. A general framework based on the notion of tree
projection of hypergraphs is considered, which generalizes all known
decomposition methods. Tractability results have been obtained both for classes
of structures where output variables are part of their specification, and for
classes of structures where computability WPD must be ensured for any possible
set of output variables. These results are shown to be tight, by exhibiting
dichotomies for classes of structures having bounded arity and where the tree
decomposition method is considered
Algorithmic Aspects of Switch Cographs
This paper introduces the notion of involution module, the first
generalization of the modular decomposition of 2-structure which has a unique
linear-sized decomposition tree. We derive an O(n^2) decomposition algorithm
and we take advantage of the involution modular decomposition tree to state
several algorithmic results. Cographs are the graphs that are totally
decomposable w.r.t modular decomposition. In a similar way, we introduce the
class of switch cographs, the class of graphs that are totally decomposable
w.r.t involution modular decomposition. This class generalizes the class of
cographs and is exactly the class of (Bull, Gem, Co-Gem, C_5)-free graphs. We
use our new decomposition tool to design three practical algorithms for the
maximum cut, vertex cover and vertex separator problems. The complexity of
these problems was still unknown for this class of graphs. This paper also
improves the complexity of the maximum clique, the maximum independant set, the
chromatic number and the maximum clique cover problems by giving efficient
algorithms, thanks to the decomposition tree. Eventually, we show that this
class of graphs has Clique-Width at most 4 and that a Clique-Width expression
can be computed in linear time
Solving MaxSAT and #SAT on structured CNF formulas
In this paper we propose a structural parameter of CNF formulas and use it to
identify instances of weighted MaxSAT and #SAT that can be solved in polynomial
time. Given a CNF formula we say that a set of clauses is precisely satisfiable
if there is some complete assignment satisfying these clauses only. Let the
ps-value of the formula be the number of precisely satisfiable sets of clauses.
Applying the notion of branch decompositions to CNF formulas and using ps-value
as cut function, we define the ps-width of a formula. For a formula given with
a decomposition of polynomial ps-width we show dynamic programming algorithms
solving weighted MaxSAT and #SAT in polynomial time. Combining with results of
'Belmonte and Vatshelle, Graph classes with structured neighborhoods and
algorithmic applications, Theor. Comput. Sci. 511: 54-65 (2013)' we get
polynomial-time algorithms solving weighted MaxSAT and #SAT for some classes of
structured CNF formulas. For example, we get algorithms for
formulas of clauses and variables and size , if has a linear
ordering of the variables and clauses such that for any variable occurring
in clause , if appears before then any variable between them also
occurs in , and if appears before then occurs also in any clause
between them. Note that the class of incidence graphs of such formulas do not
have bounded clique-width
Solving Vertex Cover in Polynomial Time on Hyperbolic Random Graphs
The VertexCover problem is proven to be computationally hard in different ways: It is NP-complete to find an optimal solution and even NP-hard to find an approximation with reasonable factors. In contrast, recent experiments suggest that on many real-world networks the run time to solve VertexCover is way smaller than even the best known FPT-approaches can explain. Similarly, greedy algorithms deliver very good approximations to the optimal solution in practice.
We link these observations to two properties that are observed in many real-world networks, namely a heterogeneous degree distribution and high clustering. To formalize these properties and explain the observed behavior, we analyze how a branch-and-reduce algorithm performs on hyperbolic random graphs, which have become increasingly popular for modeling real-world networks. In fact, we are able to show that the VertexCover problem on hyperbolic random graphs can be solved in polynomial time, with high probability.
The proof relies on interesting structural properties of hyperbolic random graphs. Since these predictions of the model are interesting in their own right, we conducted experiments on real-world networks showing that these properties are also observed in practice. When utilizing the same structural properties in an adaptive greedy algorithm, further experiments suggest that, on real instances, this leads to better approximations than the standard greedy approach within reasonable time
A graph rewriting programming language for graph drawing
This paper describes Grrr, a prototype visual graph drawing tool. Previously there were no visual languages for programming graph drawing algorithms despite the inherently visual nature of the process. The languages which gave a diagrammatic view of graphs were not computationally complete and so could not be used to implement complex graph drawing algorithms. Hence current graph drawing tools are all text based. Recent developments in graph rewriting systems have produced computationally complete languages which give a visual view of graphs both whilst programming and during execution. Grrr, based on the Spider system, is a general purpose graph rewriting programming language which has now been extended in order to demonstrate the feasibility of visual graph drawing
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