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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    High multiplicity N-fold IP via configuration LP
    N-fold integer programs (IPs) form an important class of block-structured IPs for which increasingly fast algorithms have recently been developed and successfully applied. We study high-multiplicity N-fold IPs, which encode IPs succinctly by presenting a description of each block type and a vector of block multiplicities. Our goal is to design algorithms which solve N-fold IPs in time polynomial in the size of the succinct encoding, which may be significantly smaller than the size of the explicit (non-succinct) instance. We present the first fixed-parameter algorithm for high-multiplicity N-fold IPs, which even works for convex objectives. Our key contribution is a novel proximity theorem which relates fractional and integer optima of the Configuration LP, a fundamental notion by Gilmore and Gomory [Oper. Res., 1961] which we generalize. Our algorithm for N-fold IP is faster than previous algorithms whenever the number of blocks is much larger than the number of block types, such as in N-fold IP models for various scheduling problems.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
    Scopus© Citations 1  134  138
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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Parameterized complexity of configuration integer programs
    Configuration integer programs (IP) have been key in the design of algorithms for NP-hard high-multiplicity problems. First, we develop fast exact (exponential-time) algorithms for Configuration IP and matching hardness results. Second, we showcase the implications of these results to bin-packing and facility-location-like problems.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
    Scopus© Citations 2  175  390
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    Item type:Publication,
    Combinatorial n-fold integer programming and applications
    (Springer, 2020-11-01) ; ;
    Many fundamental NP-hard problems can be formulated as integer linear programs (ILPs). A famous algorithm by Lenstra solves ILPs in time that is exponential only in the dimension of the program, and polynomial in the size of the ILP. That algorithm became a ubiquitous tool in the design of fixed-parameter algorithms for NP-hard problems, where one wishes to isolate the hardness of a problem by some parameter. However, in many cases using Lenstra’s algorithm has two drawbacks: First, the run time of the resulting algorithms is often double-exponential in the parameter, and second, an ILP formulation in small dimension cannot easily express problems involving many different costs. Inspired by the work of Hemmecke et al. (Math Program 137(1–2, Ser. A):325–341, 2013), we develop a single-exponential algorithm for so-called combinatorialn-fold integer programs, which are remarkably similar to prior ILP formulations for various problems, but unlike them, also allow variable dimension. We then apply our algorithm to many relevant problems problems like Closest String, Swap Bribery, Weighted Set Multicover, and several others, and obtain exponential speedups in the dependence on the respective parameters, the input size, or both. Unlike Lenstra’s algorithm, which is essentially a bounded search tree algorithm, our result uses the technique of augmenting steps. At its heart is a deep result stating that in combinatorial n-fold IPs, existence of an augmenting step implies existence of a “local” augmenting step, which can be found using dynamic programming. Our results provide an important insight into many problems by showing that they exhibit this phenomenon, and highlights the importance of augmentation techniques.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
    Scopus© Citations 26  288  3
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    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Voting and bribing in single-exponential time
    (Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2020-06-20) ; ;
    We introduce a general problem about bribery in voting systems. In theR-Multi-Briberyproblem,the goal is to bribe a set of voters at minimum cost such that a desired candidate wins the perturbedelection under the voting ruleR. Voters assign prices for withdrawing their vote, for swapping thepositions of two consecutive candidates in their preference order, and for perturbing their approval countto favour candidates.As our main result, we show thatR-Multi-Briberyis fixed-parameter tractable parameterized bythe number of candidates for many natural voting rulesR, including Kemeny rule, all scoring protocols,maximin rule, Bucklin rule, fallback rule, SP-AV, and any C1 rule. In particular, our result resolves theparameterized complexity ofR-Swap Briberyfor all those voting rules, thereby solving a long-standingopen problem and “Challenge #2” of the “Nine Research Challenges in Computational Social Choice”by Bredereck et al.Further, our algorithm runs in single-exponential time for arbitrary cost; it thus improves the earlierdouble-exponential time algorithm by Dorn and Schlotter that is restricted to the uniform-cost case forall scoring protocols, the maximin rule, and Bucklin rule.
    Publicationtype: Journal Article
      194  15
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    Multitype integer monoid optimization and applications
    Configuration integer programs (IP) have been key in the design of algorithms for NP-hard high-multiplicity problems since the pioneering work of Gilmore and Gomory [Oper. Res., 1961]. Configuration IPs have one variable for each possible configuration, which describes a placement of items into a location, and whose value corresponds to the number of locations with that placement. In high multiplicity problems items come in types, and are represented succinctly by a vector of multiplicities; solving the configuration IP then amounts to deciding whether the input vector of multiplicities of items of each type can be decomposed into a given number of configurations. We make this typically implicit notion explicit by observing that the set of all input vectors which can be decomposed into configurations forms a monoid of configurations, and the problem corresponding to solving the configuration IP is the Monoid Decomposition problem. Then, motivated by applications, we enrich this problem in two ways. First, in certain problems each configuration additionally has an objective value, and the problem becomes an optimization problem of finding a “best” decomposition under the given objective. Second, there are often different types of configurations derived from different types of locations. The resulting problem is then to optimize over decompositions of the input multiplicity vector into configurations of several types, and we call it Multitype Integer Monoid Optimization, or simply MIMO. We develop fast exact (exponential-time) algorithms for various MIMO with few or many location types and with various objectives. Our algorithms build on a novel proximity theorem which connects the solutions of a certain configuration IP to those of its continuous relaxation. We then cast several fundamental scheduling and bin packing problems as MIMOs, and thereby obtain new or substantially faster algorithms for them. We complement our positive algorithmic results by hardness results which show that, under common complexity assumptions, the algorithms cannot be extended into more relaxed regimes.
    Publicationtype: Preprint
      217  86
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    Item type:Publication,
    A unifying framework for manipulation problems
    Publicationtype: Conference Paper
      93
  • Some of the metrics are blocked by your 
    Item type:Publication, Access status: with files ,
    Combinatorial n-fold integer programming and applications
    (Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing, 2017-09-01) ; ;
    Many fundamental NP-hard problems can be formulated as integer linear programs (ILPs). A famous algorithm by Lenstra allows to solve ILPs in time that is exponential only in the dimension of the program. That algorithm therefore became a ubiquitous tool in the design of fixed-parameter algorithms for NP-hard problems, where one wishes to isolate the hardness of a problem by some parameter. However, it was discovered that in many cases using Lenstra's algorithm has two drawbacks: First, the run time of the resulting algorithms is often doublyexponential in the parameter, and second, an ILP formulation in small dimension can not easily express problems which involve many different costs. Inspired by the work of Hemmecke, Onn and Romanchuk [Math. Prog. 2013], we develop a single-exponential algorithm for so-called combinatorial n-fold integer programs, which are remarkably similar to prior ILP formulations for various problems, but unlike them, also allow variable dimension. We then apply our algorithm to a few representative problems like Closest String, Swap Bribery, Weighted Set Multicover, and obtain exponential speedups in the dependence on the respective parameters, the input size, or both. Unlike Lenstra's algorithm, which is essentially a bounded search tree algorithm, our result uses the technique of augmenting steps. At its heart is a deep result stating that in combinatorial n-fold IPs an existence of an augmenting step implies an existence of a "local" augmenting step, which can be found using dynamic programming. Our results provide an important insight into many problems by showing that they exhibit this phenomenon, and highlights the importance of augmentation techniques.
    Publicationtype: Conference Paper
      936  245
  • Some of the metrics are blocked by your 
    Item type:Publication,
    Voting and bribing in single-exponential time
    We introduce a general problem about bribery in voting systems. In the R-Multi-Bribery problem, the goal is to bribe a set of voters at minimum cost such that a desired candidate wins the manipulated election under the voting rule R. Voters assign prices for withdrawing their vote, for swapping the positions of two consecutive candidates in their preference order, and for perturbing their approval count for a candidate. As our main result, we show that R-Multi-Bribery is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the number of candidates for many natural voting rules R, including Kemeny rule, all scoring protocols, maximin rule, Bucklin rule, fallback rule, SP-AV, and any C1 rule. In particular, our result resolves the parameterized of R-Swap Bribery for all those voting rules, thereby solving a long-standing open problem and "Challenge #2" of the 9 Challenges in computational social choice by Bredereck et al. Further, our algorithm runs in single-exponential time for arbitrary cost; it thus improves the earlier double-exponential time algorithm by Dorn and Schlotter that is restricted to the unit-cost case for all scoring protocols, the maximin rule, and Bucklin rule.
    Publicationtype: Conference Paper
      97