677 research outputs found
Combinatorics and Geometry of Transportation Polytopes: An Update
A transportation polytope consists of all multidimensional arrays or tables
of non-negative real numbers that satisfy certain sum conditions on subsets of
the entries. They arise naturally in optimization and statistics, and also have
interest for discrete mathematics because permutation matrices, latin squares,
and magic squares appear naturally as lattice points of these polytopes.
In this paper we survey advances on the understanding of the combinatorics
and geometry of these polyhedra and include some recent unpublished results on
the diameter of graphs of these polytopes. In particular, this is a thirty-year
update on the status of a list of open questions last visited in the 1984 book
by Yemelichev, Kovalev and Kravtsov and the 1986 survey paper of Vlach.Comment: 35 pages, 13 figure
Fractional Perfect b-Matching Polytopes. I: General Theory
The fractional perfect b-matching polytope of an undirected graph G is the
polytope of all assignments of nonnegative real numbers to the edges of G such
that the sum of the numbers over all edges incident to any vertex v is a
prescribed nonnegative number b_v. General theorems which provide conditions
for nonemptiness, give a formula for the dimension, and characterize the
vertices, edges and face lattices of such polytopes are obtained. Many of these
results are expressed in terms of certain spanning subgraphs of G which are
associated with subsets or elements of the polytope. For example, it is shown
that an element u of the fractional perfect b-matching polytope of G is a
vertex of the polytope if and only if each component of the graph of u either
is acyclic or else contains exactly one cycle with that cycle having odd
length, where the graph of u is defined to be the spanning subgraph of G whose
edges are those at which u is positive.Comment: 37 page
Universality theorems for inscribed polytopes and Delaunay triangulations
We prove that every primary basic semialgebraic set is homotopy equivalent to
the set of inscribed realizations (up to M\"obius transformation) of a
polytope. If the semialgebraic set is moreover open, then, in addition, we
prove that (up to homotopy) it is a retract of the realization space of some
inscribed neighborly (and simplicial) polytope. We also show that all algebraic
extensions of are needed to coordinatize inscribed polytopes.
These statements show that inscribed polytopes exhibit the Mn\"ev universality
phenomenon.
Via stereographic projections, these theorems have a direct translation to
universality theorems for Delaunay subdivisions. In particular, our results
imply that the realizability problem for Delaunay triangulations is
polynomially equivalent to the existential theory of the reals.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure
Probabilistic Bisimulation: Naturally on Distributions
In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic
processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of
probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong
bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats
probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in
the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state
and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition refines the
understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In
particular, it solves a long-standing open problem concerning the
representation of memoryless continuous time by memory-full continuous time.
Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for finite
but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems
Stable marriage and roommates problems with restricted edges: complexity and approximability
In the Stable Marriage and Roommates problems, a set of agents is given, each of them having a strictly ordered preference list over some or all of the other agents. A matching is a set of disjoint pairs of mutually acceptable agents. If any two agents mutually prefer each other to their partner, then they block the matching, otherwise, the matching is said to be stable. We investigate the complexity of finding a solution satisfying additional constraints on restricted pairs of agents. Restricted pairs can be either forced or forbidden. A stable solution must contain all of the forced pairs, while it must contain none of the forbidden pairs.
Dias et al. (2003) gave a polynomial-time algorithm to decide whether such a solution exists in the presence of restricted edges. If the answer is no, one might look for a solution close to optimal. Since optimality in this context means that the matching is stable and satisfies all constraints on restricted pairs, there are two ways of relaxing the constraints by permitting a solution to: (1) be blocked by as few as possible pairs, or (2) violate as few as possible constraints n restricted pairs.
Our main theorems prove that for the (bipartite) Stable Marriage problem, case (1) leads to View the MathML source-hardness and inapproximability results, whilst case (2) can be solved in polynomial time. For non-bipartite Stable Roommates instances, case (2) yields an View the MathML source-hard but (under some cardinality assumptions) 2-approximable problem. In the case of View the MathML source-hard problems, we also discuss polynomially solvable special cases, arising from restrictions on the lengths of the preference lists, or upper bounds on the numbers of restricted pairs
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