We examine several online matching problems, with applications to Internet advertising reservation systems. Consider an edge-weighted bipartite graph G, with partite sets L, R. We develop an 8-competitive algorithm for the following secretary problem: Initially given R, and the size of L, the algorithm receives the vertices of L sequentially, in a random order. When a vertex l \in L is seen, all edges incident to l are revealed, together with their weights. The algorithm must immediately either match l to an available vertex of R, or decide that l will remain unmatched.
Dimitrov and Plaxton show a 16-competitive algorithm for the transversal matroid secretary problem, which is the special case with weights on vertices, not edges. (Equivalently, one may assume that for each l \in L, the weights on all edges incident to l are identical.) We use a similar algorithm, but simplify and improve the analysis to obtain a better competitive ratio for the more general problem. Perhaps of more interest is the fact that our analysis is easily extended to obtain competitive algorithms for similar problems, such as to find disjoint sets of edges in hypergraphs where edges arrive online. We also introduce secretary problems with adversarially chosen groups. Finally, we give a 2e-competitive algorithm for the secretary problem on graphic matroids, where, with edges appearing online, the goal is to find a maximum-weight acyclic subgraph of a given graph.
Whereas there are simple algorithms that are proven to be optimal for the Classical and the Multiple Choice Secretary Problem, the Matroid Secretary Problem is less thoroughly understood. This paper proposes the generalization of some simple algorithms from the Classical and Multiple Choice versions on the Matroid Secretary Problem. Out of two algorithms that make decisions based on samples, like the Dynkin's algorithm, one is proven to be an instance of Greedy Algorithm (Bahrani et al., 2022), while the other is not. A generalized version of the Virtual Algorithm (Babaioff et al., 2018) obtai…
We consider a generalization of the secretary problem where contracts are temporary, and for a fixed duration. This models online hiring of temporary employees, or online auctions for re-usable resources. The problem is related to the question of Finding a large independent set in a random unit interval graph.
In the ordinal Matroid Secretary Problem (MSP), elements from a weighted matroid are presented in random order to an algorithm that must incrementally select a large weight independent set. However, the algorithm can only compare pairs of revealed elements without using its numerical value. An algorithm is $α$ probability-competitive if every element from the optimum appears with probability $1/α$ in the output. We present a technique to design algorithms with strong probability-competitive ratios, improving the guarantees for almost every matroid class considered in the literature: e.g., we g…
We provide online algorithms for secretary matching in general weighted graphs, under the well-studied models of vertex and edge arrivals. In both models, edges are associated with arbitrary weights that are unknown from the outset, and are revealed online. Under vertex arrival, vertices arrive online in a uniformly random order; upon the arrival of a vertex $v$, the weights of edges from $v$ to all previously arriving vertices are revealed, and the algorithm decides which of these edges, if any, to include in the matching. Under edge arrival, edges arrive online in a uniformly random order; u…
The classical analysis of online algorithms, due to its worst-case nature, can be quite pessimistic when the input instance at hand is far from worst-case. Often this is not an issue with machine learning approaches, which shine in exploiting patterns in past inputs in order to predict the future. However, such predictions, although usually accurate, can be arbitrarily poor. Inspired by a recent line of work, we augment three well-known online settings with machine learned predictions about the future, and develop algorithms that take them into account. In particular, we study the following on…
We study various generalizations of the secretary problem with submodular objective functions. Generally, a set of requests is revealed step-by-step to an algorithm in random order. For each request, one option has to be selected so as to maximize a monotone submodular function while ensuring feasibility. For our results, we assume that we are given an offline algorithm computing an $α$-approximation for the respective problem. This way, we separate computational limitations from the ones due to the online nature. When only focusing on the online aspect, we can assume $α= 1$. In the submodular…
In the matroid secretary problem we are given a stream of elements and asked to choose a set of elements that maximizes the total value of the set, subject to being an independent set of a matroid given in advance. The difficulty comes from the assumption that decisions are irrevocable: if we choose to accept an element when it is presented by the stream then we can never get rid of it, and if we choose not to accept it then we cannot later add it. Babaioff, Immorlica, and Kleinberg [SODA 2007] introduced this problem, gave O(1)-competitive algorithms for certain classes of matroids, and conje…
Current paper introduces a Hypergraph Graph model of data storage which can be represented as a hybrid data structure based on Hypergraph and Graph. The pro-posed data structure is claimed to realize complex combinatorial structures. The formal definition of the data structure is presented along with the proper justification from real world scenarios. The paper reports some elementary concepts of Hypergraph and presents theoretical aspects of the proposed data structure including the concepts of Path, Cycle etc. The detailed analysis of weighted HG 2 is presented along with discussions on Cost…
We investigate the two problems of computing the union join graph as well as computing the subset graph for acyclic hypergraphs and their subclasses. In the union join graph $G$ of an acyclic hypergraph $H$, each vertex of $G$ represents a hyperedge of $H$ and two vertices of $G$ are adjacent if there exits a join tree $T$ for $H$ such that the corresponding hyperedges are adjacent in $T$. The subset graph of a hypergraph $H$ is a directed graph where each vertex represents a hyperedge of $H$ and there is a directed edge from a vertex $u$ to a vertex $v$ if the hyperedge corresponding to $u$ i…
The modeling flexibility provided by hypergraphs has drawn a lot of interest from the combinatorial scientific community, leading to novel models and algorithms, their applications, and development of associated tools. Hypergraphs are now a standard tool in combinatorial scientific computing. The modeling flexibility of hypergraphs however, comes at a cost: algorithms on hypergraphs are inherently more complicated than those on graphs, which sometimes translate to nontrivial increases in processing times. Neither the modeling flexibility of hypergraphs, nor the runtime efficiency of graph algo…
Most prior work on online matching problems has been with the flexibility of keeping some vertices unmatched. We study three related online matching problems with the constraint of matching every vertex, i.e., with no rejections. We adopt a model in which vertices arrive in uniformly random order and the non-negative edge-weights are arbitrary. For the capacitated online bipartite matching problem, in which the vertices of one side of the graph are offline and those of the other side arrive online, we give a 4.62-competitive algorithm when the capacity of each offline vertex is 2. For the onli…
Current paper discusses the methodologies involved in integrating Resource Description Framework into a HyperGraph Graph HG 2 data structure in order to preserve the semantics of the information contained in RDF document for dealing future cross platform information portability issues. The entire semantic web is mostly dominated by few information frameworks like RDF, Topic Map, OWL etc. Hence semantic web currently faces the problem of non existence of common information meta-model which can integrate them all for ex-panded semantic search. On the background of development of Hyper Graph Grap…
We propose a directed acyclic hypergraph framework for a probabilistic graphical model that we call Bayesian hypergraphs. The space of directed acyclic hypergraphs is much larger than the space of chain graphs. Hence Bayesian hypergraphs can model much finer factorizations than Bayesian networks or LWF chain graphs and provide simpler and more computationally efficient procedures for factorizations and interventions. Bayesian hypergraphs also allow a modeler to represent causal patterns of interaction such as Noisy-OR graphically (without additional annotations). We introduce global, local and…
The atom graph of a graph is the graph whose vertices are the atoms obtained by clique minimal separator decomposition of this graph, and whose edges are the edges of all possible atom trees of this graph. We provide two efficient algorithms for computing this atom graph, with a complexity in $O(min(n^α\log n, nm, n(n+\overline{m}))$ time, which is no more than the complexity of computing the atoms in the general case. %\par We extend our results to $α$-acyclic hypergraphs. We introduce the notion of union join graph, which is the union of all possible join trees; we apply our algorithms for a…
Hypergraphs offer flexible and robust data representations for many applications, but methods that work directly on hypergraphs are not readily available and tend to be prohibitively expensive. Much of the current analysis of hypergraphs relies on first performing a graph expansion -- either based on the nodes (clique expansion), or on the edges (line graph) -- and then running standard graph analytics on the resulting representative graph. However, this approach suffers from massive space complexity and high computational cost with increasing hypergraph size. Here, we present efficient, paral…
The notions of hypertree width and generalized hypertree width were introduced by Gottlob, Leone, and Scarcello in order to extend the concept of hypergraph acyclicity. These notions were further generalized by Grohe and Marx, who introduced the fractional hypertree width of a hypergraph. All these width parameters on hypergraphs are useful for extending tractability of many problems in database theory and artificial intelligence. In this paper, we study the approximability of (generalized, fractional) hyper treewidth of sparse hypergraphs where the criterion of sparsity reflects the sparsity …
Cartesian products of graphs have been studied extensively since the 1960s. They make it possible to decrease the algorithmic complexity of problems by using the factorization of the product. Hypergraphs were introduced as a generalization of graphs and the definition of Cartesian products extends naturally to them. In this paper, we give new properties and algorithms concerning coloring aspects of Cartesian products of hypergraphs. We also extend a classical prime factorization algorithm initially designed for graphs to connected conformal hypergraphs using 2-sections of hypergraphs.
The celebrated Cheeger's Inequality \cite{am85,a86} establishes a bound on the expansion of a graph via its spectrum. This inequality is central to a rich spectral theory of graphs, based on studying the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix (and other related matrices) of graphs. It has remained open to define a suitable spectral model for hypergraphs whose spectra can be used to estimate various combinatorial properties of the hypergraph. In this paper we introduce a new hypergraph Laplacian operator (generalizing the Laplacian matrix of graphs)and study its spectra. We prove …
A hypergraph $G=(V,E)$ is $(k,\ell)$-sparse if no subset $V'\subset V$ spans more than $k|V'|-\ell$ hyperedges. We characterize $(k,\ell)$-sparse hypergraphs in terms of graph theoretic, matroidal and algorithmic properties. We extend several well-known theorems of Haas, Lov{á}sz, Nash-Williams, Tutte, and White and Whiteley, linking arboricity of graphs to certain counts on the number of edges. We also address the problem of finding lower-dimensional representations of sparse hypergraphs, and identify a critical behaviour in terms of the sparsity parameters $k$ and $\ell$. Our constructions e…
A hypergraph is said to be $1$-Sperner if for every two hyperedges the smallest of their two set differences is of size one. We present several applications of $1$-Sperner hypergraphs and their structure to graphs. In particular, we consider the classical characterizations of threshold and domishold graphs and use them to obtain further characterizations of these classes in terms of $1$-Spernerness, thresholdness, and $2$-asummability of their vertex cover, clique, dominating set, and closed neighborhood hypergraphs. Furthermore, we apply a decomposition property of $1$-Sperner hypergraphs to …
In recent years, hypergraph generalizations of many graph cut problems have been introduced and analyzed as a way to better explore and understand complex systems and datasets characterized by multiway relationships. Recent work has made use of a generalized hypergraph cut function which for a hypergraph $\mathcal{H} = (V,E)$ can be defined by associating each hyperedge $e \in E$ with a splitting function ${\bf w}_e$, which assigns a penalty to each way of separating the nodes of $e$. When each ${\bf w}_e$ is a submodular cardinality-based splitting function, meaning that ${\bf w}_e(S) = g(|S|…
A $t$-dimensional orthogonal representation of a hypergraph is an assignment of nonzero vectors in $\mathbb{R}^t$ to its vertices, such that every hyperedge contains two vertices whose vectors are orthogonal. The orthogonality dimension of a hypergraph $H$, denoted by $\overlineξ(H)$, is the smallest integer $t$ for which there exists a $t$-dimensional orthogonal representation of $H$. In this paper we study computational aspects of the orthogonality dimension of graphs and hypergraphs. We prove that for every $k \geq 4$, it is $\mathsf{NP}$-hard (resp. quasi-$\mathsf{NP}$-hard) to distinguish…
