We study the online maximum matching problem in a model in which the edges are associated with a known recourse parameter $k$. An online algorithm for this problem has to maintain a valid matching while edges of the underlying graph are presented one after the other. At any moment the algorithm can decide to include an edge into the matching or to exclude it, under the restriction that at most $k$ such actions per edge take place, where $k$ is typically a small constant. This problem was introduced and studied in the context of general online packing problems with recourse by Avitabile et al. [Information Processing Letters, 2013], whereas the special case $k=2$ was studied by Boyar et al. [WADS 2017].
In the first part of this paper we consider the edge arrival model, in which an arriving edge never disappears from the graph. Here, we first show an improved analysis on the performance of the algorithm AMP of Avitabile et al., by exploiting the structure of the matching problem. In addition, we show that the greedy algorithm has competitive ratio $3/2$ for every even $k$ and ratio $2$ for every odd $k$. Moreover, we present and analyze an improvement of the greedy algorithm which we call $L$-Greedy, and we show that for small values of $k$ it outperforms the algorithm AMP. In terms of lower bounds, we show that no deterministic algorithm better than $1+1/(k-1)$ exists, improving upon the known lower bound of $1+1/k$.
The second part of the paper is devoted to the edge arrival/departure model, which is the fully dynamic variant of online matching with recourse. The analysis of $L$-Greedy and AMP carry through in this model; moreover we show a lower bound of $(k^2-3k+6) / (k^2-4k+7)$ for all even $k \ge 4$. For $k\in\{2,3\}$, the competitive ratio is $3/2$.
We consider the online unrelated-machine load balancing problem with recourse, where the algorithm is allowed to re-assign prior jobs. We give a $(2+ε)$-competitive algorithm for the problem with $O_ε(\log n)$ amortized recourse per job. This is the first $O(1)$-competitive algorithm for the problem with reasonable recourse, and the competitive ratio nearly matches the long-standing best-known offline approximation guarantee. We also show an $O(\log\log n/\log\log\log n)$-competitive algorithm for the problem with $O(1)$ amortized recourse. The best-known bounds from prior work are $O(\log\log…
In the classical Online Metric Matching problem, we are given a metric space with $k$ servers. A collection of clients arrive in an online fashion, and upon arrival, a client should irrevocably be matched to an as-yet-unmatched server. The goal is to find an online matching which minimizes the total cost, i.e., the sum of distances between each client and the server it is matched to. We know deterministic algorithms~\cite{KP93,khuller1994line} that achieve a competitive ratio of $2k-1$, and this bound is tight for deterministic algorithms. The problem has also long been considered in specializ…
In online minimum cost matching on the line, $n$ requests appear one by one and have to be matched immediately and irrevocably to a given set of servers, all on the real line. The goal is to minimize the sum of distances from the requests to their respective servers. Despite all research efforts, it remains an intriguing open question whether there exists an $O(1)$-competitive algorithm. The best known online algorithm by Raghvendra [SoCG18] achieves a competitive factor of $Θ(\log n)$. This result matches a lower bound of $Ω(\log n)$ [Latin18] that holds for a quite large class of online algo…
In this work, we study online graph problems with monotone-sum objectives. We propose a general two-fold greedy algorithm that references yardstick algorithms to achieve $t$-competitiveness while incurring at most $\frac{w_{\text{max}}\cdot(t+1)}{\min\{1, w_\text{min}\}\cdot(t-1)}$ amortized recourse, where $w_{\text{max}}$ and $w_{\text{min}}$ are the largest value and the smallest positive value that can be assigned to an element in the sum. We further show that the general algorithm can be improved for three classical graph problems by carefully choosing the referenced algorithm and tuning …
In this paper we study the facility location problem in the online with recourse and dynamic algorithm models. In the online with recourse model, clients arrive one by one and our algorithm needs to maintain good solutions at all time steps with only a few changes to the previously made decisions (called recourse). We show that the classic local search technique can lead to a $(1+\sqrt{2}+ε)$-competitive online algorithm for facility location with only $O\left(\frac{\log n}ε\log\frac1ε\right)$ amortized facility and client recourse. We then turn to the dynamic algorithm model for the problem, …
This paper addresses the problem of maximizing the expected size of a matching in the case of unreliable vertices and/or edges. The assumption is that upon failure, remaining vertices that have not been matched may be subject to a new assignment. This process may be repeated a given number of times, and the objective is to end with the overall maximum number of matched vertices. The origin of this problem is in kidney exchange programs, going on in several countries, where a vertex is an incompatible patient-donor pair; the objective is to match these pairs so as to maximize the number of serv…
In this paper, we study the set cover problem in the fully dynamic model. In this model, the set of active elements, i.e., those that must be covered at any given time, can change due to element arrivals and departures. The goal is to maintain an algorithmic solution that is competitive with respect to the current optimal solution. This model is popular in both the dynamic algorithms and online algorithms communities. The difference is in the restriction placed on the algorithm: in dynamic algorithms, the running time of the algorithm making updates (called update time) is bounded, while in on…
A tight lower bound for malicious online bipartite matching with limited recourse budget
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Jagiellonian University, Kraków（雅盖隆大学）；University of Warsaw（华沙大学）；Max Planck Institute for Informatics, SIC, Saarbrücken（马克斯·普朗克计算机科学研究所）
The vector-balancing problem is a fundamental problem in discrepancy theory: given T vectors in $[-1,1]^n$, find a signing $σ(a) \in \{\pm 1\}$ of each vector $a$ to minimize the discrepancy $\| \sum_{a} σ(a) \cdot a \|_{\infty}$. This problem has been extensively studied in the static/offline setting. In this paper we initiate its study in the fully-dynamic setting with recourse: the algorithm sees a stream of T insertions and deletions of vectors, and at each time must maintain a low-discrepancy signing, while also minimizing the amortized recourse (the number of times any vector changes its…
Nearly thirty years ago, Bar-Noy, Motwani and Naor [IPL'92] conjectured that an online $(1+o(1))Δ$-edge-coloring algorithm exists for $n$-node graphs of maximum degree $Δ=ω(\log n)$. This conjecture remains open in general, though it was recently proven for bipartite graphs under \emph{one-sided vertex arrivals} by Cohen et al.~[FOCS'19]. In a similar vein, we study edge coloring under widely-studied relaxations of the online model. Our main result is in the \emph{random-order} online model. For this model, known results fall short of the Bar-Noy et al.~conjecture, either in the degree bound […
The goal in {\em reconfiguration problems} is to compute a {\em gradual transformation} between two feasible solutions of a problem such that all intermediate solutions are also feasible. In the {\em Matching Reconfiguration Problem} (MRP), proposed in a pioneering work by Ito et al.\ from 2008, we are given a graph $G$ and two matchings $M$ and $M'$, and we are asked whether there is a sequence of matchings in $G$ starting with $M$ and ending at $M'$, each resulting from the previous one by either adding or deleting a single edge in $G$, without ever going through a matching of size $< \min\{…
University at Buffalo（纽约州立大学布法罗分校）；Microsoft Research（微软研究院）
In this paper we introduce and study the online consistent $k$-clustering with outliers problem, generalizing the non-outlier version of the problem studied in [Lattanzi-Vassilvitskii, ICML17]. We show that a simple local-search based online algorithm can give a bicriteria constant approximation for the problem with $O(k^2 \log^2 (nD))$ swaps of medians (recourse) in total, where $D$ is the diameter of the metric. When restricted to the problem without outliers, our algorithm is simpler, deterministic and gives better approximation ratio and recourse, compared to that of [Lattanzi-Vassilvitski…
Online algorithms that allow a small amount of migration or recourse have been intensively studied in the last years. They are essential in the design of competitive algorithms for dynamic problems, where objects can also depart from the instance. In this work, we give a general framework to obtain so called robust online algorithms for these dynamic problems: these online algorithm achieve an asymptotic competitive ratio of $γ+ε$ with migration $O(1/ε)$, where $γ$ is the best known offline asymptotic approximation ratio. In order to use our framework, one only needs to construct a suitable on…
For numerous online bipartite matching problems, such as edge-weighted matching and matching under two-sided vertex arrivals, the state-of-the-art fractional algorithms outperform their randomized integral counterparts. This gap is surprising, given that the bipartite fractional matching polytope is integral, and so lossless rounding is possible. This gap was explained by Devanur et al.~(SODA'13), who showed that \emph{online} lossless rounding is impossible. Despite the above, we initiate the study of lossless online rounding for online bipartite matching problems. Our key observation is that…
Karp, Vazirani, and Vazirani (STOC 1990) initiated the study of online bipartite matching, which has held a central role in online algorithms ever since. Of particular importance are the Ranking algorithm for integral matching and the Water-filling algorithm for fractional matching. Most algorithms in the literature can be viewed as adaptations of these two in the corresponding models. Recently, Huang et al.~(STOC 2018, SODA 2019) introduced a more general model called \emph{fully online matching}, which considers general graphs and allows all vertices to arrive online. They also generalized R…
Mehta and Panigrahi (FOCS 2012) introduce the problem of online matching with stochastic rewards, where edges are associated with success probabilities and a match succeeds with the probability of the corresponding edge. It is one of the few online matching problems that have defied the randomized online primal dual framework by Devanur, Jain, and Kleinberg (SODA 2013) thus far. This paper unlocks the power of randomized online primal dual in online matching with stochastic rewards by employing the configuration linear program rather than the standard matching linear program used in previous w…
We propose a formal graph-theoretic model for studying the problem of matching rides online in a ride-sharing platform. Unlike most of the literature on online matching, our model, that we call {\em Online Windowed Non-Bipartite Matching} ($\mbox{OWNBM}$), pertains to online matching in {\em non-bipartite} graphs. We show that the edge-weighted and vertex-weighted versions of our model arise naturally in ride-sharing platforms. We provide a randomized $\frac{1}{4}$-competitive algorithm for the edge-weighted case using a beautiful result of Lehmann, Lehmann and Nisan (EC 2001) for combinatoria…
Huang et al.~(STOC 2018) introduced the fully online matching problem, a generalization of the classic online bipartite matching problem in that it allows all vertices to arrive online and considers general graphs. They showed that the ranking algorithm by Karp et al.~(STOC 1990) is strictly better than $0.5$-competitive and the problem is strictly harder than the online bipartite matching problem in that no algorithms can be $(1-1/e)$-competitive. This paper pins down two tight competitive ratios of classic algorithms for the fully online matching problem. For the fractional version of the pr…
Online bipartite matching with one-sided arrival and its variants have been extensively studied since the seminal work of Karp, Vazirani, and Vazirani (STOC 1990). Motivated by real-life applications with dynamic market structures, e.g. ride-sharing, two generalizations of the classical one-sided arrival model are proposed to allow non-bipartite graphs and to allow all vertices to arrive online. Namely, online matching with general vertex arrival is introduced by Wang and Wong (ICALP 2015), and fully online matching is introduced by Huang et al. (JACM 2020). In this paper, we study the fractio…
In this paper we introduce the \emph{semi-online} model that generalizes the classical online computational model. The semi-online model postulates that the unknown future has a predictable part and an adversarial part; these parts can be arbitrarily interleaved. An algorithm in this model operates as in the standard online model, i.e., makes an irrevocable decision at each step. We consider bipartite matching in the semi-online model, for both integral and fractional cases. Our main contributions are competitive algorithms for this problem that are close to or match a hardness bound. The comp…
In this short note we present a comprehensive bibliography for the online exact string matching problem. The problem consists in finding all occurrences of a given pattern in a text. It is an extensively studied problem in computer science, mainly due to its direct applications to such diverse areas as text, image and signal processing, speech analysis and recognition, data compression, information retrieval, computational biology and chemistry. Since 1970 more than 120 string matching algorithms have been proposed. In this note we present a comprehensive list of (almost) all string matching a…
We study the online bipartite matching problem, introduced by Karp, Vazirani and Vazirani [1990]. For bipartite graphs with matchings of size $n$, it is known that the Ranking randomized algorithm matches at least $(1 - \frac{1}{e})n$ edges in expectation. It is also known that no online algorithm matches more than $(1 - \frac{1}{e})n + O(1)$ edges in expectation, when the input is chosen from a certain distribution that we refer to as $D_n$. This upper bound also applies to fractional matchings. We review the known proofs for this last statement. In passing we observe that the $O(1)$ additive…
In this paper, we study two variants of the online metric matching problem. The first problem is the online metric matching problem where all the servers are placed at one of two positions in the metric space. We show that a simple greedy algorithm achieves the competitive ratio of 3 and give a matching lower bound. The second problem is the online facility assignment problem on a line, where servers have capacities, servers and requests are placed on 1-dimensional line, and the distances between any two consecutive servers are the same. We show lower bounds $1+ \sqrt{6}$ $(> 3.44948)$, $\frac…
Online bipartite matching has been extensively studied. In the unweighted setting, Karp et al. gave an optimal $(1 - 1/e)$-competitive randomized algorithm. In the weighted setting, optimal algorithms have been achieved only under assumptions on the edge weights. For the general case, little was known beyond the trivial $1/2$-competitive greedy algorithm. Recently, Fahrbach et al. have presented an 0.5086-competitive algorithm (for the problem in a model, namely free-disposal), overcoming the long-standing barrier of 1/2. Besides, in designing competitive algorithms for the online matching pro…
We consider the problem of online Min-cost Perfect Matching with Delays (MPMD) introduced by Emek et al. (STOC 2016). In this problem, an even number of requests appear in a metric space at different times and the goal of an online algorithm is to match them in pairs. In contrast to traditional online matching problems, in MPMD all requests appear online and an algorithm can match any pair of requests, but such decision may be delayed (e.g., to find a better match). The cost is the sum of matching distances and the introduced delays. We present the first deterministic online algorithm for this…
Two related online problems: knapsack and truthful bipartite matching are considered. For these two problems, the common theme is how to `match' an arriving left vertex in an online fashion with any of the available right vertices, if at all, so as to maximize the sum of the value of the matched edges, subject to satisfying a sum-weight constraint on the matched left vertices. Assuming that the left vertices arrive in an uniformly random order (secretary model), two almost similar algorithms are proposed for the two problems, that are $2e$ competitive and $24$ competitive, respectively. The pr…
We consider Online Minimum Bipartite Matching under the uniform metric. We show that Randomized Greedy achieves a competitive ratio equal to $(1+1/n) (H_{n+1}-1)$, which matches the lower bound. Comparing with the fact that RG achieves an optimal ratio of $Θ(\ln n)$ for the same problem but under the adversarial order, we find that the weaker arrival assumption of random order doesn't offer any extra algorithmic advantage for RG, or make the model strictly more tractable.
We revisit the fully online matching model (Huang et al., J.\ ACM, 2020), an extension of the classic online matching model due to Karp, Vazirani, and Vazirani (STOC 1990), which has recently received a lot of attention (Huang et al., SODA 2019 and FOCS 2020), partly due to applications in ride-sharing platforms. It has been shown that the fully online version is harder than the classic version for which the achievable competitive ratio is at most $0.6317$, rather than precisely $1-\frac{1}{e}\approx 0.6321$. We introduce two new ideas to the construction. By optimizing the parameters of the m…
We introduce a weighted version of the ranking algorithm by Karp et al. (STOC 1990), and prove a competitive ratio of 0.6534 for the vertex-weighted online bipartite matching problem when online vertices arrive in random order. Our result shows that random arrivals help beating the 1-1/e barrier even in the vertex-weighted case. We build on the randomized primal-dual framework by Devanur et al. (SODA 2013) and design a two dimensional gain sharing function, which depends not only on the rank of the offline vertex, but also on the arrival time of the online vertex. To our knowledge, this is the…
The rich literature on online Bayesian selection problems has long focused on so-called prophet inequalities, which compare the gain of an online algorithm to that of a "prophet" who knows the future. An equally-natural, though significantly less well-studied benchmark is the optimum online algorithm, which may be omnipotent (i.e., computationally-unbounded), but not omniscient. What is the computational complexity of the optimum online? How well can a polynomial-time algorithm approximate it? We study the above questions for the online stochastic maximum-weight matching problem under vertex a…
The Adwords and Online Bipartite Matching problems have enjoyed a renewed attention over the past decade due to their connection to Internet advertising. Our community has contributed, among other things, new models (notably stochastic) and extensions to the classical formulations to address the issues that arise from practical needs. In this paper, we propose a new generalization based on matroids and show that many of the previous results extend to this more general setting. Because of the rich structures and expressive power of matroids, our new setting is potentially of interest both in th…
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 consider a generalization of the vertex weighted online bipartite matching problem where the offline vertices, called resources, are reusable. In particular, when a resource is matched it is unavailable for a deterministic time duration $d$ after which it becomes available for a re-match. Thus, a resource can be matched to many different online vertices over a period of time. While recent work on the problem has resolved the asymptotic case where we have large starting inventory (i.e., many copies) of every resource, we consider the (more general) case of unit inventory and give the first a…
The surprising results of Karp, Vazirani and Vazirani and (respectively) Buchbinder et al are examples where rather simple randomizations provide provably better approximations than the corresponding deterministic counterparts for online bipartite matching and (respectively) unconstrained non-monotone submodular maximization. We show that seemingly strong extensions of the deterministic online computation model can at best match the performance of naive randomization. More specifically, for bipartite matching, we show that in the priority model (allowing very general ways to order the input st…
Online matching and its variants are some of the most fundamental problems in the online algorithms literature. In this paper, we study the online weighted bipartite matching problem. Karp et al. (STOC 1990) gave an elegant algorithm in the unweighted case that achieves a tight competitive ratio of $1-1/e$. In the weighted case, however, we can easily show that no competitive ratio is obtainable without the commonly accepted free disposal assumption. Under this assumption, it is not hard to prove that the greedy algorithm is $1/2$ competitive, and that this is tight for deterministic algorithm…
The online matching problem was introduced by Karp, Vazirani and Vazirani nearly three decades ago. In that seminal work, they studied this problem in bipartite graphs with vertices arriving only on one side, and presented optimal deterministic and randomized algorithms for this setting. In comparison, more general arrival models, such as edge arrivals and general vertex arrivals, have proven more challenging and positive results are known only for various relaxations of the problem. In particular, even the basic question of whether randomization allows one to beat the trivially-optimal determ…
We study the following vertex-weighted online bipartite matching problem: $G(U, V, E)$ is a bipartite graph. The vertices in $U$ have weights and are known ahead of time, while the vertices in $V$ arrive online in an arbitrary order and have to be matched upon arrival. The goal is to maximize the sum of weights of the matched vertices in $U$. When all the weights are equal, this reduces to the classic \emph{online bipartite matching} problem for which Karp, Vazirani and Vazirani gave an optimal $\left(1-\frac{1}{e}\right)$-competitive algorithm in their seminal work~\cite{KVV90}. Our main resu…
We present space lower bounds for online pattern matching under a number of different distance measures. Given a pattern of length m and a text that arrives one character at a time, the online pattern matching problem is to report the distance between the pattern and a sliding window of the text as soon as the new character arrives. We require that the correct answer is given at each position with constant probability. We give Omega(m) bit space lower bounds for L_1, L_2, L_\infty, Hamming, edit and swap distances as well as for any algorithm that computes the cross-correlation/convolution. We…
