We consider the 0-1 Incremental Knapsack Problem (IKP) where the capacity grows over time periods and if an item is placed in the knapsack in a certain period, it cannot be removed afterwards. The contribution of a packed item in each time period depends on its profit as well as on a time factor which reflects the importance of the period in the objective function. The problem calls for maximizing the weighted sum of the profits over the whole time horizon. In this work, we provide approximation results for IKP and its restricted variants. In some results, we rely on Linear Programming (LP) to derive approximation bounds and show how the proposed LP-based analysis can be seen as a valid alternative to more formal proof systems. We first manage to prove the tightness of some approximation ratios of a general purpose algorithm currently available in the literature and originally applied to a time-invariant version of the problem. We also devise a Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (PTAS) when the input value indicating the number of periods is considered as a constant. Then, we add the mild and natural assumption that each item can be packed in the first time period. For this variant, we discuss different approximation algorithms suited for any number of time periods and for the special case with two periods.
We introduce and study a discrete multi-period extension of the classical knapsack problem, dubbed generalized incremental knapsack. In this setting, we are given a set of $n$ items, each associated with a non-negative weight, and $T$ time periods with non-decreasing capacities $W_1 \leq \dots \leq W_T$. When item $i$ is inserted at time $t$, we gain a profit of $p_{it}$; however, this item remains in the knapsack for all subsequent periods. The goal is to decide if and when to insert each item, subject to the time-dependent capacity constraints, with the objective of maximizing our total prof…
We study the incremental knapsack problem, where one wishes to sequentially pack items into a knapsack whose capacity expands over a finite planning horizon, with the objective of maximizing time-averaged profits. While various approximation algorithms were developed under mitigating structural assumptions, obtaining non-trivial performance guarantees for this problem in its utmost generality has remained an open question thus far. In this paper, we devise a polynomial-time approximation scheme for general instances of the incremental knapsack problem, which is the strongest guarantee possible…
The Time-Invariant Incremental Knapsack problem (IIK) is a generalization of Maximum Knapsack to a discrete multi-period setting. At each time, capacity increases and items can be added, but not removed from the knapsack. The goal is to maximize the sum of profits over all times. IIK models various applications including specific financial markets and governmental decision processes. IIK is strongly NP-hard and there has been work on giving approximation algorithms for some special cases. In this paper, we settle the complexity of IIK by designing a PTAS based on rounding a disjuncive formulat…
Knapsack and Partition are two important additive problems whose fine-grained complexities in the $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation setting are not yet settled. In this work, we make progress on both problems by giving improved algorithms. - Knapsack can be $(1 - \varepsilon)$-approximated in $\tilde O(n + (1/\varepsilon) ^ {2.2} )$ time, improving the previous $\tilde O(n + (1/\varepsilon) ^ {2.25} )$ by Jin (ICALP'19). There is a known conditional lower bound of $(n+\varepsilon)^{2-o(1)}$ based on $(\min,+)$-convolution hypothesis. - Partition can be $(1 - \varepsilon)$-approximated in $\tilde…
We study the two-dimensional geometric knapsack problem (2DK) in which we are given a set of n axis-aligned rectangular items, each one with an associated profit, and an axis-aligned square knapsack. The goal is to find a (non-overlapping) packing of a maximum profit subset of items inside the knapsack (without rotating items). The best-known polynomial-time approximation factor for this problem (even just in the cardinality case) is (2 + ε) [Jansen and Zhang, SODA 2004]. In this paper, we break the 2 approximation barrier, achieving a polynomial-time (17/9 + ε) < 1.89 approximation, which imp…
Obtaining strong linear relaxations of capacitated covering problems constitute a major technical challenge even for simple settings. For one of the most basic cases, the Knapsack-Cover (Min-Knapsack) problem, the relaxation based on knapsack-cover inequalities achieves an integrality gap of 2. These inequalities have been exploited in more general environments, many of which admit primal-dual approximation algorithms. Inspired by problems from power and transport systems, we introduce a new general setting in which items can be taken fractionally to cover a given demand. The cost incurred by …
We present new exact and approximation algorithms for 0-1-Knapsack and Unbounded Knapsack: * Exact Algorithm for 0-1-Knapsack: 0-1-Knapsack has known algorithms running in time $\widetilde{O}(n + \min\{n OPT, n W, OPT^2, W^2\})$, where $n$ is the number of items, $W$ is the weight budget, and $OPT$ is the optimal profit. We present an algorithm running in time $\widetilde{O}(n + (W + OPT)^{1.5})$. This improves the running time in case $n,W,OPT$ are roughly equal. * Exact Algorithm for Unbounded Knapsack: Unbounded Knapsack has known algorithms running in time $\widetilde{O}(n + \min\{n \cdot …
The subject of this paper is the time complexity of approximating Knapsack, Subset Sum, Partition, and some other related problems. The main result is an $\widetilde{O}(n+1/\varepsilon^{5/3})$ time randomized FPTAS for Partition, which is derived from a certain relaxed form of a randomized FPTAS for Subset Sum. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first NP-hard problem that has been shown to admit a subquadratic time approximation scheme, i.e., one with time complexity of $O((n+1/\varepsilon)^{2-δ})$ for some $δ>0$. To put these developments in context, note that a quadratic FPTAS for \pa…
We consider approximation algorithms for covering integer programs of the form min $\langle c, x \rangle $ over $x \in \mathbb{N}^n $ subject to $A x \geq b $ and $x \leq d$; where $A \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}^{m \times n}$, $b \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}^m$, and $c, d \in \mathbb{R}_{\geq 0}^n$ all have nonnegative entries. We refer to this problem as $\operatorname{CIP}$, and the special case without the multiplicity constraints $x \le d$ as $\operatorname{CIP}_{\infty}$. These problems generalize the well-studied Set Cover problem. We make two algorithmic contributions. First, we show that a simp…
Conditional lower bounds for dynamic graph problems has received a great deal of attention in recent years. While many results are now known for the fully-dynamic case and such bounds often imply worst-case bounds for the partially dynamic setting, it seems much more difficult to prove amortized bounds for incremental and decremental algorithms. In this paper we consider partially dynamic versions of three classic problems in graph theory. Based on popular conjectures we show that: -- No algorithm with amortized update time $O(n^{1-\varepsilon})$ exists for incremental or decremental maximum c…
Betweenness centrality ranks the importance of nodes by their participation in all shortest paths of the network. Therefore computing exact betweenness values is impractical in large networks. For static networks, approximation based on randomly sampled paths has been shown to be significantly faster in practice. However, for dynamic networks, no approximation algorithm for betweenness centrality is known that improves on static recomputation. We address this deficit by proposing two incremental approximation algorithms (for weighted and unweighted connected graphs) which provide a provable gu…
