A hitting set for a collection of sets is a set that has a non-empty intersection with each set in the collection; the hitting set problem is to find a hitting set of minimum cardinality. Motivated by instances of the hitting set problem where the number of sets to be hit is large, we introduce the notion of implicit hitting set problems. In an implicit hitting set problem the collection of sets to be hit is typically too large to list explicitly; instead, an oracle is provided which, given a set H, either determines that H is a hitting set or returns a set that H does not hit. We show a number of examples of classic implicit hitting set problems, and give a generic algorithm for solving such problems optimally. The main contribution of this paper is to show that this framework is valuable in developing approximation algorithms. We illustrate this methodology by presenting a simple on-line algorithm for the minimum feedback vertex set problem on random graphs. In particular our algorithm gives a feedback vertex set of size n-(1/p)\log{np}(1-o(1)) with probability at least 3/4 for the random graph G_{n,p} (the smallest feedback vertex set is of size n-(2/p)\log{np}(1+o(1))). We also consider a planted model for the feedback vertex set in directed random graphs. Here we show that a hitting set for a polynomial-sized subset of cycles is a hitting set for the planted random graph and this allows us to exactly recover the planted feedback vertex set.
Hitting Set is a classic problem in combinatorial optimization. Its input consists of a set system F over a finite universe U and an integer t; the question is whether there is a set of t elements that intersects every set in F. The Hitting Set problem parameterized by the size of the solution is a well-known W[2]-complete problem in parameterized complexity theory. In this paper we investigate the complexity of Hitting Set under various structural parameterizations of the input. Our starting point is the folklore result that Hitting Set is polynomial-time solvable if there is a tree T on vert…
In the $l$-path vertex cover problem the input is an undirected graph $G$ and an integer $k$. The goal is to decide whether there is a set of vertices $S$ of size at most $k$ such that $G-S$ does not contain a path with $l$ vertices. In this paper we give parameterized algorithms for $l$-path vertex cover for $l = 5,6,7$, whose time complexities are $O^*(3.945^k)$, $O^*(4.947^k)$, and $O^*(5.951^k)$, respectively.
This paper presents significantly improved deterministic algorithms for some of the key problems in the area of distributed graph algorithms, including network decomposition, hitting sets, and spanners. As the main ingredient in these results, we develop novel randomized distributed algorithms that we can analyze using only pairwise independence, and we can thus derandomize efficiently. As our most prominent end-result, we obtain a deterministic construction for $O(\log n)$-color $O(\log n \cdot \log\log\log n)$-strong diameter network decomposition in $\tilde{O}(\log^3 n)$ rounds. This is the…
Universal hitting sets are sets of words that are unavoidable: every long enough sequence is hit by the set (i.e., it contains a word from the set). There is a tight relationship between universal hitting sets and minimizers schemes, where minimizers schemes with low density (i.e., efficient schemes) correspond to universal hitting sets of small size. Local schemes are a generalization of minimizers schemes which can be used as replacement for minimizers scheme with the possibility of being much more efficient. We establish the link between efficient local schemes and the minimum length of a s…
We prove that given a bipartite graph G with vertex set V and an integer k, deciding whether there exists a subset of V of size k hitting all maximal independent sets of G is complete for the class Sigma_2^P.
The known linear-time kernelizations for $d$-Hitting Set guarantee linear worst-case running times using a quadratic-size data structure (that is not fully initialized). Getting rid of this data structure, we show that problem kernels of asymptotically optimal size $O(k^d)$ for $d$-Hitting Set are computable in linear time and space. Additionally, we experimentally compare the linear-time kernelizations for $d$-Hitting Set to each other and to a classical data reduction algorithm due to Weihe.
We study the complexity of the Hitting Set problem in set systems (hypergraphs) that avoid certain sub-structures. In particular, we characterize the classical and parameterized complexity of the problem when the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension (VC-dimension) of the input is small. VC-dimension is a natural measure of complexity of set systems. Several tractable instances of Hitting Set with a geometric or graph-theoretical flavor are known to have low VC-dimension. In set systems of bounded VC-dimension, Hitting Set is known to admit efficient and almost optimal approximation algorithms (Brönni…
In the Directed Long Cycle Hitting Set} problem we are given a directed graph $G$, and the task is to find a set $S$ of at most $k$ vertices/arcs such that $G-S$ has no cycle of length longer than $\ell$. We show that the problem can be solved in time $2^{\mathcal O(\ell k^3\log k + k^5\log k\log\ell)}\cdot n^{\mathcal O(1)}$, that is, it is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) parameterized by $k$ and $\ell$. This algorithm can be seen as a far-reaching generalization of the fixed-parameter tractability of {\sc Mixed Graph Feedback Vertex Set} [Bonsma and Lokshtanov WADS 2011], which is already a …
Given a hypergraph $H = (V,E)$, what is the smallest subset $X \subseteq V$ such that $e \cap X \neq \emptyset$ holds for all $e \in E$? This problem, known as the hitting set problem, is a basic problem in parameterized complexity theory. There are well-known kernelization algorithms for it, which get a hypergraph $H$ and a number $k$ as input and output a hypergraph $H'$ such that (1) $H$ has a hitting set of size $k$ if, and only if, $H'$ has such a hitting set and (2) the size of $H'$ depends only on $k$ and on the maximum cardinality $d$ of edges in $H$. The algorithms run in polynomial t…
In an implicit combinatorial optimization problem, the constraints are not enumerated explicitly but rather stated implicitly through equations, other constraints or auxiliary algorithms. An important subclass of such problems is the implicit set cover (or, equivalently, hitting set) problem in which the sets are not given explicitly but rather defined implicitly For example, the well-known minimum feedback arc set problem is such a problem. In this paper, we consider such a cover problem that arises in the study of wild populations in biology in which the sets are defined implicitly via the M…
Set cover and hitting set are fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization which are well-studied in the offline, online, and dynamic settings. We study the geometric versions of these problems and present new online and dynamic algorithms for them. In the online version of set cover (resp. hitting set), $m$ sets (resp.~$n$ points) are give $n$ points (resp.~$m$ sets) arrive online, one-by-one. In the dynamic versions, points (resp. sets) can arrive as well as depart. Our goal is to maintain a set cover (resp. hitting set), minimizing the size of the computed solution. For online set cov…
The sudoku minimum number of clues problem is the following question: what is the smallest number of clues that a sudoku puzzle can have? For several years it had been conjectured that the answer is 17. We have performed an exhaustive computer search for 16-clue sudoku puzzles, and did not find any, thus proving that the answer is indeed 17. In this article we describe our method and the actual search. As a part of this project we developed a novel way for enumerating hitting sets. The hitting set problem is computationally hard; it is one of Karp's 21 classic NP-complete problems. A standard …
d-Hitting Set is the NP-hard problem of selecting at most k vertices of a hypergraph so that each hyperedge, all of which have cardinality at most d, contains at least one selected vertex. The applications of d-Hitting Set are, for example, fault diagnosis, automatic program verification, and the noise-minimizing assignment of frequencies to radio transmitters. We show a linear-time algorithm that transforms an instance of d-Hitting Set into an equivalent instance comprising at most O(k^d) hyperedges and vertices. In terms of parameterized complexity, this is a problem kernel. Our kernelizatio…
We investigate whether kernelization results can be obtained if we restrict kernelization algorithms to run in logarithmic space. This restriction for kernelization is motivated by the question of what results are attainable for preprocessing via simple and/or local reduction rules. We find kernelizations for d-Hitting Set(k), d-Set Packing(k), Edge Dominating Set(k) and a number of hitting and packing problems in graphs, each running in logspace. Additionally, we return to the question of linear-time kernelization. For d-Hitting Set(k) a linear-time kernelization was given by van Bevern [Algo…
Finding inclusion-minimal "hitting sets" for a given collection of sets is a fundamental combinatorial problem with applications in domains as diverse as Boolean algebra, computational biology, and data mining. Much of the algorithmic literature focuses on the problem of *recognizing* the collection of minimal hitting sets; however, in many of the applications, it is more important to *generate* these hitting sets. We survey twenty algorithms from across a variety of domains, considering their history, classification, useful features, and computational performance on a variety of synthetic and…
A bicolored rectangular family BRF is a collection of all axis-parallel rectangles contained in a given region Z of the plane formed by selecting a bottom-left corner from a set A and an upper-right corner from a set B. We prove that the maximum independent set and the minimum hitting set of a BRF have the same cardinality and devise polynomial time algorithms to compute both. As a direct consequence, we obtain the first polynomial time algorithm to compute minimum biclique covers, maximum cross-free matchings and jump numbers in a class of bipartite graphs that significantly extends convex bi…
In this work, we study the $d$-Hitting Set and Feedback Vertex Set problems through the paradigm of finding diverse collections of $r$ solutions of size at most $k$ each, which has recently been introduced to the field of parameterized complexity [Baste et al., 2019]. This paradigm is aimed at addressing the loss of important side information which typically occurs during the abstraction process which models real-world problems as computational problems. We use two measures for the diversity of such a collection: the sum of all pairwise Hamming distances, and the minimum pairwise Hamming dista…
Hitting Axis-Parallel Segments with Weighted Points
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi（德里印度理工学院）；Indian Institute of Science Bengaluru（班加罗尔印度科学研究所）；Indian Institute of Technology Delhi（德里印度理工学院）
The transversal hypergraph problem is the task of enumerating the minimal hitting sets of a hypergraph. It is a long-standing open question whether this can be done in output-polynomial time. For hypergraphs whose solutions have bounded size, Eiter and Gottlob [SICOMP 1995] gave an algorithm that runs in output-polynomial time, but whose space requirement also scales with the output size. We improve this to polynomial delay and polynomial space. More generally, we present an algorithm that on $n$-vertex, $m$-edge hypergraphs has delay $O(m^{k^*+1} n^2)$ and uses $O(mn)$ space, where $k^*$ is t…
In the {\sc Hitting Set} problem, we are given a collection $\cal F$ of subsets of a ground set $V$ and an integer $p$, and asked whether $V$ has a $p$-element subset that intersects each set in $\cal F$. We consider two parameterizations of {\sc Hitting Set} below tight upper bounds: $p=m-k$ and $p=n-k$. In both cases $k$ is the parameter. We prove that the first parameterization is fixed-parameter tractable, but has no polynomial kernel unless coNP$\subseteq$NP/poly. The second parameterization is W[1]-complete, but the introduction of an additional parameter, the degeneracy of the hypergrap…
Let $H$ be a fixed undirected graph on $k$ vertices. The $H$-hitting set problem asks for deleting a minimum number of vertices from a given graph $G$ in such a way that the resulting graph has no copies of $H$ as a subgraph. This problem is a special case of the hypergraph vertex cover problem on $k$-uniform hypergraphs, and thus admits an efficient $k$-factor approximation algorithm. The purpose of this article is to investigate the question that for which graphs $H$ this trivial approximation factor $k$ can be improved.
Dept of Computer Science, Univ of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学计算机科学系）；Systems Biology Dept, Harvard Medical School（哈佛医学院系统生物学系）；Dept of Computer Science, MIT（麻省理工学院计算机科学系）；Google（谷歌）
This paper formulates a novel problem on graphs: find the minimal subset of edges in a fully connected graph, such that the resulting graph contains all spanning trees for a set of specifed sub-graphs. This formulation is motivated by an un-supervised grammar induction problem from computational linguistics. We present a reduction to some known problems and algorithms from graph theory, provide computational complexity results, and describe an approximation algorithm.
We consider the following NP-hard problem: in a weighted graph, find a minimum cost set of vertices whose removal leaves a graph in which no two cycles share an edge. We obtain a constant-factor approximation algorithm, based on the primal-dual method. Moreover, we show that the integrality gap of the natural LP relaxation of the problem is Θ(\log n), where n denotes the number of vertices in the graph.
A blocking set in a graph $G$ is a subset of vertices that intersects every maximum independent set of $G$. Let ${\sf mmbs}(G)$ be the size of a maximum (inclusion-wise) minimal blocking set of $G$. This parameter has recently played an important role in the kernelization of Vertex Cover parameterized by the distance to a graph class ${\cal F}$. Indeed, it turns out that the existence of a polynomial kernel for this problem is closely related to the property that ${\sf mmbs}({\cal F})=\sup_{G \in {\cal F}}{\sf mmbs}(G)$ is bounded by a constant, and thus several recent results focused on deter…
We consider the Sparse Hitting Set (Sparse-HS) problem, where we are given a set system $(V,\mathcal{F},\mathcal{B})$ with two families $\mathcal{F},\mathcal{B}$ of subsets of $V$. The task is to find a hitting set for $\mathcal{F}$ that minimizes the maximum number of elements in any of the sets of $\mathcal{B}$. Our focus is on determining the complexity of some special cases of Sparse-HS with respect to the sparseness $k$, which is the optimum number of hitting set elements in any set of $\mathcal{B}$. For the Sparse Vertex Cover (Sparse-VC) problem, $V$ is given by the vertex set of a grap…
We study the problem of identity testing of markov chains. In this setting, we are given access to a single trajectory from a markov chain with unknown transition matrix $Q$ and the goal is to determine whether $Q = P$ for some known matrix $P$ or $\text{Dist}(P, Q) \geq ε$ where $\text{Dist}$ is suitably defined. In recent work by Daskalakis, Dikkala and Gravin, 2018, it was shown that it is possible to distinguish between the two cases provided the length of the observed trajectory is at least super-linear in the hitting time of $P$ which may be arbitrarily large. In this paper, we propose a…
