arXiv subjects

Gerhard J. Woeginger

Publications and source records attributed to Gerhard J. Woeginger.

29 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Parameterized Algorithmics for Computational Social Choice: Nine Research Challenges

Computational Social Choice is an interdisciplinary research area involving Economics, Political Science, and Social Science on the one side, and Mathematics and Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems) on the other side. Typical computational problems studied in this field include the vulnerability of voting procedures against attacks, or preference aggregation in multi-agent systems. Parameterized Algorithmics is a subfield of Theoretical Computer Science seeking to exploit meaningful problem-specific parameters in order to identify tractable special cases of in general computationally hard problems. In this paper, we propose nine of our favorite research challenges concerning the parameterized complexity of problems appearing in this context.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2014

Planar 3-dimensional assignment problems with Monge-like cost arrays

Given an $n\times n\times p$ cost array $C$ we consider the problem $p$-P3AP which consists in finding $p$ pairwise disjoint permutations $φ_1,φ_2,\ldots,φ_p$ of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ such that $\sum_{k=1}^{p}\sum_{i=1}^nc_{iφ_k(i)k}$ is minimized. For the case $p=n$ the planar 3-dimensional assignment problem P3AP results. Our main result concerns the $p$-P3AP on cost arrays $C$ that are layered Monge arrays. In a layered Monge array all $n\times n$ matrices that result from fixing the third index $k$ are Monge matrices. We prove that the $p$-P3AP and the P3AP remain NP-hard for layered Monge arrays. Furthermore, we show that in the layered Monge case there always exists an optimal solution of the $p$-3PAP which can be represented as matrix with bandwidth $\le 4p-3$. This structural result allows us to provide a dynamic programming algorithm that solves the $p$-P3AP in polynomial time on layered Monge arrays when $p$ is fixed.

math.OC↗

arXiv2014

Well-solvable cases of the QAP with block-structured matrices

We investigate special cases of the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) where one of the two underlying matrices carries a simple block structure. For the special case where the second underlying matrix is a monotone anti-Monge matrix, we derive a polynomial time result for a certain class of cut problems. For the special case where the second underlying matrix is a product matrix, we identify two sets of conditions on the block structure that make this QAP polynomially solvable respectively NP-hard.

math.OC↗

arXiv2013

Uniqueness in quadratic and hyperbolic 0-1 programming problems

We analyze the question of deciding whether a quadratic or a hyperbolic 0-1 programming instance has a unique optimal solution. Both uniqueness questions are known to be NP-hard, but are unlikely to be contained in the class NP. We precisely pinpoint their computational complexity by showing that they both are complete for the complexity class {\mbox{$Δ_2$P}.

math.CO↗

arXiv2012

Core stability in hedonic coalition formation

In many economic, social and political situations individuals carry out activities in groups (coalitions) rather than alone and on their own. Examples range from households and sport clubs to research networks, political parties and trade unions. The underlying game theoretic framework is known as coalition formation. This survey discusses the notion of core stability in hedonic coalition formation (where each player's happiness only depends on the other members of his coalition but not on how the remaining players outside his coalition are grouped). We present the central concepts and algorithmic approaches in the area, provide many examples, and pose a number of open problems.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2011

The interval ordering problem

For a given set of intervals on the real line, we consider the problem of ordering the intervals with the goal of minimizing an objective function that depends on the exposed interval pieces (that is, the pieces that are not covered by earlier intervals in the ordering). This problem is motivated by an application in molecular biology that concerns the determination of the structure of the backbone of a protein. We present polynomial-time algorithms for several natural special cases of the problem that cover the situation where the interval boundaries are agreeably ordered and the situation where the interval set is laminar. Also the bottleneck variant of the problem is shown to be solvable in polynomial time. Finally we prove that the general problem is NP-hard, and that the existence of a constant-factor-approximation algorithm is unlikely.

cs.DS↗

arXiv2011

The Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem

We investigate a special case of the maximum quadratic assignment problem where one matrix is a product matrix and the other matrix is the distance matrix of a one-dimensional point set. We show that this special case, which we call the Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem, is NP-hard in the ordinary sense and solvable in pseudo-polynomial time. Our approach also yields a polynomial time solution for the following problem from chemical graph theory: Find a tree that maximizes the Wiener index among all trees with a prescribed degree sequence. This settles an open problem from the literature.

math.OC↗

arXiv2011

An Algorithmic Analysis of the Honey-Bee Game

The Honey-Bee game is a two-player board game that is played on a connected hexagonal colored grid or (in a generalized setting) on a connected graph with colored nodes. In a single move, a player calls a color and thereby conquers all the nodes of that color that are adjacent to his own current territory. Both players want to conquer the majority of the nodes. We show that winning the game is PSPACE-hard in general, NP-hard on series-parallel graphs, but easy on outerplanar graphs. In the solitaire version, the goal of the single player is to conquer the entire graph with the minimum number of moves. The solitaire version is NP-hard on trees and split graphs, but can be solved in polynomial time on co-comparability graphs.

cs.GT↗

arXiv2011

Analysis of multi-stage open shop processing systems

We study algorithmic problems in multi-stage open shop processing systems that are centered around reachability and deadlock detection questions. We characterize safe and unsafe system states. We show that it is easy to recognize system states that can be reached from the initial state (where the system is empty), but that in general it is hard to decide whether one given system state is reachable from another given system state. We show that the problem of identifying reachable deadlock states is hard in general open shop systems, but is easy in the special case where no job needs processing on more than two machines (by linear programming and matching theory), and in the special case where all machines have capacity one (by graph-theoretic arguments).

cs.DS↗

arXiv2010

The Traveling Salesman Problem Under Squared Euclidean Distances

Let $P$ be a set of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, and let $α\ge 1$ be a real number. We define the distance between two points $p,q\in P$ as $|pq|^α$, where $|pq|$ denotes the standard Euclidean distance between $p$ and $q$. We denote the traveling salesman problem under this distance function by TSP($d,α$). We design a 5-approximation algorithm for TSP(2,2) and generalize this result to obtain an approximation factor of $3^{α-1}+\sqrt{6}^α/3$ for $d=2$ and all $α\ge2$. We also study the variant Rev-TSP of the problem where the traveling salesman is allowed to revisit points. We present a polynomial-time approximation scheme for Rev-TSP$(2,α)$ with $α\ge2$, and we show that Rev-TSP$(d, α)$ is APX-hard if $d\ge3$ and $α>1$. The APX-hardness proof carries over to TSP$(d, α)$ for the same parameter ranges.

cs.CG↗

arXiv2003

The Geometric Maximum Traveling Salesman Problem

We consider the traveling salesman problem when the cities are points in R^d for some fixed d and distances are computed according to geometric distances, determined by some norm. We show that for any polyhedral norm, the problem of finding a tour of maximum length can be solved in polynomial time. If arithmetic operations are assumed to take unit time, our algorithms run in time O(n^{f-2} log n), where f is the number of facets of the polyhedron determining the polyhedral norm. Thus for example we have O(n^2 log n) algorithms for the cases of points in the plane under the Rectilinear and Sup norms. This is in contrast to the fact that finding a minimum length tour in each case is NP-hard. Our approach can be extended to the more general case of quasi-norms with not necessarily symmetric unit ball, where we get a complexity of O(n^{2f-2} log n). For the special case of two-dimensional metrics with f=4 (which includes the Rectilinear and Sup norms), we present a simple algorithm with O(n) running time. The algorithm does not use any indirect addressing, so its running time remains valid even in comparison based models in which sorting requires Omega(n \log n) time. The basic mechanism of the algorithm provides some intuition on why polyhedral norms allow fast algorithms. Complementing the results on simplicity for polyhedral norms, we prove that for the case of Euclidean distances in R^d for d>2, the Maximum TSP is NP-hard. This sheds new light on the well-studied difficulties of Euclidean distances.

cs.DS↗