The Alcuin number of a graph and its connections to the vertex cover number

We consider a planning problem that generalizes Alcuin's river crossing problem to scenarios with arbitrary conflict graphs. This generalization leads to the so-called Alcuin number of the underlying conflict graph. We derive a variety of combinatorial, structural, algorithmical, and complexity theoretical results around the Alcuin number. Our technical main result is an NP-certificate for the Alcuin number. It turns out that the Alcuin number of a graph is closely related to the size of a minimum vertex cover in the graph, and we unravel several surprising connections between these two graph parameters. We provide hardness results and a fixed parameter tractability result for computing the Alcuin number. Furthermore we demonstrate that the Alcuin number of chordal graphs, bipartite graphs, and planar graphs is substantially easier to analyze than the Alcuin number of general graphs

Solving a system of linear diophantine equations with lower and upper bounds on the variables

We develop an algorithm for solving a system of diophantine equations with lower and upper bounds on the variables. The algorithm is based on lattice basis reduction. It first finds a short vector satisfying the system of diophantine equations, and a set of vectors belonging to the null-space of the constraint matrix. Due to basis reduction, all these vectors are relatively short. The next step is to branch on linear combinations of the null-space vectors, which either yields a vector that satisfies the bound constraints or provides a proof that no such vector exists. The research was motivated by the need for solving constrained diophantine equations as subproblems when designing integrated circuits for video signal processing. Our algorithm is tested with good results on real-life data, and on instances from the literatur

On k-Column Sparse Packing Programs

We consider the class of packing integer programs (PIPs) that are column sparse, i.e. there is a specified upper bound k on the number of constraints that each variable appears in. We give an (ek+o(k))-approximation algorithm for k-column sparse PIPs, improving on recent results of $k^2\cdot 2^k$ and $O(k^2)$. We also show that the integrality gap of our linear programming relaxation is at least 2k-1; it is known that k-column sparse PIPs are $\Omega(k/ \log k)$-hard to approximate. We also extend our result (at the loss of a small constant factor) to the more general case of maximizing a submodular objective over k-column sparse packing constraints.Comment: 19 pages, v3: additional detail

Market split and basis reduction: towards a solution of the Cornuejols-Dawande instances

Previously, G. Cornuejols and M. Dawande (1998) proposed a set of 0-1 linear programming instances that proved to be very hard to solve by traditional methods, and in particular by linear programming based branch-and-bound. They offered these market split instances as a challenge to the integer programming community. The market split problem can be formulated as a system of linear diophantine equations in 0-1 variables. We use the algorithm of K. Aardal et al. (1998) based on lattice basis reduction. This algorithm is not restricted to deal with market split instances only but is a general method for solving systems of linear diophantine equations with bounds on the variables. We show computational results from solving both feasibility and optimization versions of the market split instances with up to 7 equations and 60 variables and discuss various branching strategies and their effect on the number of enumerated nodes. To our knowledge, the largest feasibility and optimization instances solved before had 6 equations and 50 variables, and 4 equations and 30 variables, respectively. We also present a probabilistic analysis describing how to compute the probability of generating infeasible market split instances. By generating instances in the way prescribed by Cornuejols and Dawande, one obtains relatively many feasible instances for sizes larger than 5 equations and 40 variable

A new foundational crisis in mathematics, is it really happening?

The article reconsiders the position of the foundations of mathematics after the discovery of HoTT. Discussion that this discovery has generated in the community of mathematicians, philosophers and computer scientists might indicate a new crisis in the foundation of mathematics. By examining the mathematical facts behind HoTT and their relation with the existing foundations, we conclude that the present crisis is not one. We reiterate a pluralist vision of the foundations of mathematics. The article contains a short survey of the mathematical and historical background needed to understand the main tenets of the foundational issues.Comment: Final versio

On the Complexity of the Asymmetric VPN Problem

We give the first constant factor approximation algorithm for the asymmetric Virtual Private Network (VPN) problem with arbitrary concave costs. We even show the stronger result, that there is always a tree solution of cost at most 2 OPT and that a tree solution of (expected) cost at most 49.84 OPT can be determined in polynomial time. Furthermore, we answer an outstanding open question about the complexity status of the so called balanced VPN problem by proving its NP-hardness