Cost-optimal constrained correlation clustering via weighted partial Maximum Satisfiability

Peer reviewe

Refined Core Relaxation for Core-Guided MaxSAT Solving

Maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT) is a viable approach to solving NP-hard optimization problems. In the realm of core-guided MaxSAT solving - one of the most effective MaxSAT solving paradigms today - algorithmic variants employing so-called soft cardinality constraints have proven very effective. In this work, we propose to combine weight-aware core extraction (WCE) - a recently proposed approach that enables relaxing multiple cores instead of a single one during iterations of core-guided search - with a novel form of structure sharing in the cardinality-based core relaxation steps performed in core-guided MaxSAT solvers. In particular, the proposed form of structure sharing is enabled by WCE, which has so-far not been widely integrated to MaxSAT solvers, and allows for introducing fewer variables and clauses during the MaxSAT solving process. Our results show that the proposed techniques allow for avoiding potential overheads in the context of soft cardinality constraint based core-guided MaxSAT solving both in theory and in practice. In particular, the combination of WCE and structure sharing improves the runtime performance of a state-of-the-art core-guided MaxSAT solver implementing the central OLL algorithm

Enabling Incrementality in the Implicit Hitting Set Approach to MaxSAT Under Changing Weights

Recent advances in solvers for the Boolean satisfiability (SAT) based optimization paradigm of maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT) have turned MaxSAT into a viable approach to finding provably optimal solutions for various types of hard optimization problems. In various types of real-world problem settings, a sequence of related optimization problems need to solved. This calls for studying ways of enabling incremental computations in MaxSAT, with the hope of speeding up the overall computation times. However, current state-of-the-art MaxSAT solvers offer no or limited forms of incrementality. In this work, we study ways of enabling incremental computations in the context of the implicit hitting set (IHS) approach to MaxSAT solving, as both one of the key MaxSAT solving approaches today and a relatively well-suited candidate for extending to incremental computations. In particular, motivated by several recent applications of MaxSAT in the context of interpretability in machine learning calling for this type of incrementality, we focus on enabling incrementality in IHS under changes to the objective function coefficients (i.e., to the weights of soft clauses). To this end, we explain to what extent different search techniques applied in IHS-based MaxSAT solving can and cannot be adapted to this incremental setting. As practical result, we develop an incremental version of an IHS MaxSAT solver, and show it provides significant runtime improvements in recent application settings which can benefit from incrementality but in which MaxSAT solvers have so-far been applied only non-incrementally, i.e., by calling a MaxSAT solver from scratch after each change to the problem instance at hand

Pseudo-Boolean Optimization by Implicit Hitting Sets

Recent developments in applying and extending Boolean satisfiability (SAT) based techniques have resulted in new types of approaches to pseudo-Boolean optimization (PBO), complementary to the more classical integer programming techniques. In this paper, we develop the first approach to pseudo-Boolean optimization based on instantiating the so-called implicit hitting set (IHS) approach, motivated by the success of IHS implementations for maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT). In particular, we harness recent advances in native reasoning techniques for pseudo-Boolean constraints, which enable efficiently identifying inconsistent assignments over subsets of objective function variables (i.e. unsatisfiable cores in the context of PBO), as a basis for developing a native IHS approach to PBO, and study the impact of various search techniques applicable in the context of IHS for PBO. Through an extensive empirical evaluation, we show that the IHS approach to PBO can outperform other currently available PBO solvers, and also provides a complementary approach to PBO when compared to classical integer programming techniques

Solving Graph Problems via Potential Maximal Cliques : An Experimental Evaluation of the Bouchitté-Todinca Algorithm

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Solving Optimization Problems via Maximum Satisfiability : Encodings and Re-Encodings

NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems are commonly encountered in numerous different domains. As such efficient methods for solving instances of such problems can save time, money, and other resources in several different applications. This thesis investigates exact declarative approaches to combinatorial optimization within the maximum satisfiability (MaxSAT) paradigm, using propositional logic as the constraint language of choice. Specifically we contribute to both MaxSAT solving and encoding techniques. In the first part of the thesis we contribute to MaxSAT solving technology by developing solver independent MaxSAT preprocessing techniques that re-encode MaxSAT instances into other instances. In order for preprocessing to be effective, the total time spent re-encoding the original instance and solving the new instance should be lower than the time required to directly solve the original instance. We show how the recently proposed label-based framework for MaxSAT preprocessing can be efficiently integrated with state-of-art MaxSAT solvers in a way that improves the empirical performance of those solvers. We also investigate the theoretical effect that label-based preprocessing has on the number of iterations needed by MaxSAT solvers in order to solve instances. We show that preprocessing does not improve best-case performance (in the number of iterations) of MaxSAT solvers, but can improve the worst-case performance. Going beyond previously proposed preprocessing rules we also propose and evaluate a MaxSAT-specific preprocessing technique called subsumed label elimination (SLE). We show that SLE is theoretically different from previously proposed MaxSAT preprocessing rules and that using SLE in conjunction with other preprocessing rules improves empirical performance of several MaxSAT solvers. In the second part of the thesis we propose and evaluate new MaxSAT encodings to two important data analysis tasks: correlation clustering and bounded treewidth Bayesian network learning. For both problems we empirically evaluate the resulting MaxSAT-based solution approach with other exact algorithms for the problems. We show that, on many benchmarks, the MaxSAT-based approach is faster and more memory efficient than other exact approaches. For correlation clustering, we also show that the quality of solutions obtained using MaxSAT is often significantly higher than the quality of solutions obtained by approximative (inexact) algorithms. We end the thesis with a discussion highlighting possible further research directions.Kombinatorinen optimointi on laajasti tutkittu matematiikan ja tietojenkäsittelytieteen osa-alue. Kombinatorisissa optimointiongelmissa diskreetin ratkaisujen joukon yli määritelty kustannusfunktio määrittää kunkin ratkaisun hyvyyden. Tehtävänä on löytää sallittujen ratkaisujen joukosta kustannusfunktion mukaan paras mahdollinen. Esimerkiksi niin sanotussa kauppamatkustajan ongelmassa annettuna joukko kaupunkeja tavoitteena on löytää lyhin mahdollinen reitti, jota kulkemalla voidaan käydä kaikissa kaupungeissa. Kauppamatkustajan ongelma sekä monet muut kombinatoriset optimointiongelmat ovat laskennallisesti haastavia, tarkemmin ilmaistuna NP-vaikeita. Haastavia kombinatorisia optimointiongelmia esiintyy monilla eri tieteen ja teollisuuden aloilla; esimerkiksi useat koneoppimiseen liittyvät ongelmat voidaan esittää kombinatorisina optimointiongelmina. Kombinatoristen optimointiongelmien moninaisuus motivoi tehokkaiden ratkaisualgoritmien kehitystä. Väitöskirjassa kehitetään deklaratiivisia ratkaisumenetelmiä NP-vaikeille optimointiongelmille. Deklaratiivinen ratkaisumenetelmä olettaa, että ratkaistavalle ongelmalle on olemassa jonkin matemaattisen rajoitekielen rajoitemalli, joka kuvaa kunkin ongelman instanssin joukkona matemaattisia rajoitteita siten, että kunkin rajoiteinstanssin optimaalinen ratkaisu voidaan tulkita alkuperäisen ongelman optimaalisena ratkaisuna. Deklaratiivisessa ratkaisumenetelmässä ratkaistavan optimointiongelman instanssi ratkaistaan kuvaamalla ensin instanssi rajoitemallilla joukoksi rajoitteita ja ratkaisemalla sitten rajoiteinstanssi rajoitekielen ratkaisualgoritmilla. Työssä käytetään lauselogiikkaa rajoitekielenä ja keskitytään lauselogiikan toteutuvuusongelman (SAT) laajennukseen optimointiongelmille. Tätä ongelmaa kutsutaan nimellä MaxSAT. Työssä kehitetään sekä sekä yleisiä MaxSAT-ratkaisumenetelmiä että MaxSAT-malleja tietyille koneoppimiseen liittyville optimointiongelmille. Väitöskirjan keskeiset kontribuutiot esitellään kahdessa osassa. Ensimmäisessä osassa kehitetään MaxSAT-ratkaisumenetelmiä, tarkemmin sanottuna MaxSAT-esikäsittelymenetelmiä. Esikäsittelymenetelmät ovat tehokkaasti laskettavissa olevia päättelysääntöjä (esikäsittelysääntöjä), joita käyttämällä annettuja MaxSAT-instansseja voidaan yksinkertaistaa. Esikäsittelyn tavoitteena on tehdä MaxSAT-instansseista helpommin ratkaistavia käytännössä. Väitöstyössä: i) esitellään tapa integroida keskeiset lauselogiikan toteutuvuusongelman esikäsittelysäännöt nykyaikaisiin MaxSAT-ratkaisualgoritmeihin ii) analysoidaan esikäsittelyn vaikutusta ratkaisualgoritmien käyttäytymiseen ja iii) esitellään uusi MaxSAT-esikäsittelysääntö. Kaikkia kontribuutioita MaxSAT-esikäsittelyyn analysoidaan sekä teoreettisella että kokeellisella tasolla. Kirjan toisessa osassa kehitetään MaxSAT-malleja kahdelle koneoppimiseen liittyvälle optimointiongelmalle: korrelaatioklusteroinnille ja Bayes-verkkojen rakenteenoppimisongelmalle. Kehitettäviä malleja analysoidaan sekä teoreettisesti, että kokeellisesti. Teoreettisella tasolla mallit todistetaan oikeellisiksi. Kokeellisella tasolla osoitetaan, että mallit mahdollistavat alkuperäisten ongelmien instanssien tehokkaan ratkaisemisen aiemmin näille ongelmille esiteltyihin eksakteihin ratkaisualgoritmeihin verrattuna

Abstract Cores in Implicit Hitting Set MaxSat Solving (Extended Abstract)

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.Maximum satisfiability (MaxSat) solving is an active area of research motivated by numerous successful applications to solving NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. One of the most successful approaches for solving MaxSat instances from real world domains are the so called implicit hitting set (IHS) solvers. IHS solvers decouple MaxSat solving into separate core-extraction (i.e. reasoning) and optimization steps which are tackled by a Boolean satisfiability (SAT) and an integer linear programming (IP) solver, respectively. While the approach shows state-of-the-art performance on many industrial instances, it is known that there exists instances on which IHS solvers need to extract an exponential number of cores before terminating. Motivated by the simplest of these problematic instances, we propose abstract cores, a compact representation for a potentially exponential number of regular cores. We demonstrate how to incorporate abstract core reasoning into the IHS algorithm and report on an empirical evaluation demonstrating, that including abstract cores into a state-of-the-art IHS solver improves its performance enough to surpass the best performing solvers of the 2019 MaxSat Evaluation.Non peer reviewe

Pseudo-Boolean Optimization by Implicit Hitting Sets

Peer reviewe

Enumerating Potential Maximal Cliques via SAT and ASP

Peer reviewe

Incremental Maximum Satisfiability

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