In this chapter, we discuss approximation algorithms for optimization problems. An optimization problem consists in finding the best (cheapest, heaviest, etc.) element in a large set P, called the feasible region and usually specified implicitly, where the quality of elements of the set are evaluated using a function f(x), the objective function, usually something fairly simple. The element tha...

The Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) is a classical NPhard optimisation problem. There exist, however, special cases of the TSP that can be solved in polynomial time. Many of the well-known TSP special cases have been characterized by imposing special four-point conditions on the underlying distance matrix. Probably the most famous of these special cases is the TSP on a Monge matrix, which is ...

In the “Game about Squares” the task is to push unit squares on an integer lattice onto corresponding dots. A square can only be moved into one given direction. When a square is pushed onto a lattice point with an arrow the direction of the square adopts the direction of the arrow. Moreover, squares can push other squares. In this paper we study the decision problem, whether all squares can be ...

The algebraic connectivity of a graph, which is the second-smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian of the graph, is a measure of connectivity. We show that the problem of adding a specified number of edges to an input graph to maximize the algebraic connectivity of the augmented graph is NP-hard.

We study the effects of faulty data on NP-hard sets. We consider hard sets for several polynomial time reductions, add corrupt data and then analyze whether the resulting sets are still hard for NP. We explain that our results are related to a weakened deterministic variant of the notion of program self-correction by Blum, Luby, and Rubinfeld. Among other results, we use the Left-Set technique ...

We consider the offline sorting buffer problem. The input is a sequence of items of different types. All items must be processed one by one by a server. The server is equipped with a random-access buffer of limited capacity which can be used to rearrange items. The problem is to design a scheduling strategy that decides upon the order in which items from the buffer are sent to the server. Each ...

It is NP-hard to decide if a given pure strategy Nash equilibrium of a given three-player game in strategic form with integer payoffs is trembling hand perfect.

A shuffle of two strings is formed by interleaving the characters into a new string, keeping the characters of each string in order. A string is a square if it is a shuffle of two identical strings. There is a known polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm to determine if a given string z is the shuffle of two given strings x, y; however, it has been an open question whether there is a pol...

The pathwidth of a graph G is the minimum clique number of H minus one, over all interval supergraphs H of G. We prove in this paper that the PATHWIDTH problem is NP-hard for particular subclasses of chordal graphs, and we deduce that the problem remains hard for weighted trees. We also discuss subclasses of chordal graphs for which the problem is polynomial.

The discrete gate sizing problem has been studied by several researchers recently. Some Complexity results have been obtained, ana' a number of heuristic algorithms have been proposed. For circuit networks that are restricted to the set of trees, or series-parallel graphs pseudo-polynomial time algorithms to obtain the exact solution have also been proposed, though none can be extended to arbit...