The Partitioning Min-Max Weighted Matching (PMMWM) problem is an NP-hard problem that combines the problem of partitioning a group of vertices of a bipartite graph into disjoint subsets with limited size and the classical Min-Max Weighted Matching (MMWM) problem. Kress et al. proposed this problem in 2015 and they also provided several algorithms, among which MP$_{\text{LS}}$ is the state-of-the-art. In this work, we observe there is a time bottleneck in the matching phase of MP$_{\text{LS}}$. Hence, we optimize the redundant operations during the matching iterations, and propose an efficient algorithm called the MP$_{\text{KM-M}}$ that greatly speeds up MP$_{\text{LS}}$. The bottleneck time complexity is optimized from $O(n^3)$ to $O(n^2)$. We also prove the correctness of MP$_{\text{KM-M}}$ by the primal-dual method. To test the performance on diverse instances, we generate various types and sizes of benchmarks, and carried out an extensive computational study on the performance of MP$_{\text{KM-M}}$ and MP$_{\text{LS}}$. The evaluation results show that our MP$_{\text{KM-M}}$ greatly shortens the runtime as compared with MP$_{\text{LS}}$ while yielding the same solution quality.
Trevisan [SICOMP 2012] presented an algorithm for Max-Cut based on spectral partitioning techniques. This is the first algorithm for Max-Cut with an approximation guarantee strictly larger than 1/2 that is not based on semidefinite programming. Trevisan showed that its approximation ratio is of at least 0.531. In this paper we improve this bound up to 0.614247. We also define and extend this result for the more general Maximum Colored Cut problem.
In this paper we study a max-min $k$-partition problem on a weighted graph, that could model a robust $k$-coalition formation. We settle the computational complexity of this problem as complete for class $Σ_2^P$. This hardness holds even for $k=2$ and arbitrary weights, or $k=3$ and non-negative weights, which matches what was known on \textsc{MaxCut} and \textsc{Min-3-Cut} one level higher in the polynomial hierarchy.
We present linear-time algorithms for partitioning a path or a tree with weights on the vertices by removing $k$ edges to maximize the minimum-weight component. We also use the same framework to partition a path with weight on the vertices, removing $k$ edges to minimize the maximum-weight component. The algorithms use the parametric search paradigm, testing candidate values until an optimum is found while simultaneously reducing the running time needed for each test. For path-partitioning, the algorithm employs a synthetic weighting scheme that results in a constant fraction reduction in runn…
The paper presents complexity results and performance guaranties for a family of approximation algorithms for an optimisation problem arising in software testing and manufacturing. The problem is formulated as a partitioning of a set where each element has an associated subset in another set, but can also be viewed as a scheduling problem with infinitely large communication delay, precedence constraints in the form of a bipartite graph, and duplication.
In a network, a $k$-plex represents a subset of $n$ vertices where the degree of each vertex in the subnetwork induced by this subset is at least $n-k$. The maximum edge-weight $k$-plex partitioning problem (Max-EkPP) is to find the $k$-plex partitioning in edge-weighted network, such that the sum of edge weights is maximal. The Max-EkPP has an important role in discovering new information in large sparse biological networks. We propose a variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm for solving Max-EkPP. The VNS implements a local search based on the 1-swap first improvement strategy and the o…
We study a broad class of graph partitioning problems, where each problem is specified by a graph $G=(V,E)$, and parameters $k$ and $p$. We seek a subset $U\subseteq V$ of size $k$, such that $α_1m_1 + α_2m_2$ is at most (or at least) $p$, where $α_1,α_2\in\mathbb{R}$ are constants defining the problem, and $m_1, m_2$ are the cardinalities of the edge sets having both endpoints, and exactly one endpoint, in $U$, respectively. This class of fixed cardinality graph partitioning problems (FGPP) encompasses Max $(k,n-k)$-Cut, Min $k$-Vertex Cover, $k$-Densest Subgraph, and $k$-Sparsest Subgraph. O…
This paper studies optimal matroid partitioning problems for various objective functions. In the problem, we are given a finite set $E$ and $k$ weighted matroids $(E, \mathcal{I}_i, w_i)$, $i = 1, \dots, k$, and our task is to find a minimum partition $(I_1,\dots,I_k)$ of $E$ such that $I_i \in \mathcal{I}_i$ for all $i$. For each objective function, we give a polynomial-time algorithm or prove NP-hardness. In particular, for the case when the given weighted matroids are identical and the objective function is the sum of the maximum weight in each set (i.e., $\sum_{i=1}^k\max_{e\in I_i}w_i(e)$…
We study graph partitioning problems from a min-max perspective, in which an input graph on n vertices should be partitioned into k parts, and the objective is to minimize the maximum number of edges leaving a single part. The two main versions we consider are where the k parts need to be of equal-size, and where they must separate a set of k given terminals. We consider a common generalization of these two problems, and design for it an $O(\sqrt{\log n\log k})$-approximation algorithm. This improves over an $O(\log^2 n)$ approximation for the second version, and roughly $O(k\log n)$ approxima…
This paper initiates the study of the classic balanced graph partitioning problem from an online perspective: Given an arbitrary sequence of pairwise communication requests between $n$ nodes, with patterns that may change over time, the objective is to service these requests efficiently by partitioning the nodes into $\ell$ clusters, each of size $k$, such that frequently communicating nodes are located in the same cluster. The partitioning can be updated dynamically by migrating nodes between clusters. The goal is to devise online algorithms which jointly minimize the amount of inter-cluster …
We study the problem of partitioning integer sequences in the one-pass data streaming model. Given is an input stream of integers $X \in \{0, 1, \dots, m \}^n$ of length $n$ with maximum element $m$, and a parameter $p$. The goal is to output the positions of separators splitting the input stream into $p$ contiguous blocks such that the maximal weight of a block is minimized. We show that computing an optimal solution requires linear space, and we design space efficient $(1+ε)$-approximation algorithms for this problem following the parametric search framework. We demonstrate that parametric s…
Let $T=(V,E)$ be a tree with associated costs on its subtrees. A minmax $k$-partition of $T$ is a partition into $k$ subtrees, minimizing the maximum cost of a subtree over all possible partitions. In the centered version of the problem, the cost of a subtree cost is defined as the minimum cost of "servicing" that subtree using a center located within it. The problem motivating this work was the sink-evacuation problem on trees, i.e., finding a collection of $k$-sinks that minimize the time required by a confluent dynamic network flow to evacuate all supplies to sinks. This paper provides the …
We present a refinement framework for multilevel hypergraph partitioning that uses max-flow computations on pairs of blocks to improve the solution quality of a $k$-way partition. The framework generalizes the flow-based improvement algorithm of KaFFPa from graphs to hypergraphs and is integrated into the hypergraph partitioner KaHyPar. By reducing the size of hypergraph flow networks, improving the flow model used in KaFFPa, and developing techniques to improve the running time of our algorithm, we obtain a partitioner that computes the best solutions for a wide range of benchmark hypergraphs…
There has been a recent explosion in the size of stored data, partially due to advances in storage technology, and partially due to the growing popularity of cloud-computing and the vast quantities of data generated. This motivates the need for streaming algorithms that can compute approximate solutions without full random access to all of the data. We model the problem of loading a graph onto a distributed cluster as computing an approximately balanced $k$-partitioning of a graph in a streaming fashion with only one pass over the data. We give lower bounds on this problem, showing that no alg…
The balanced hypergraph partitioning problem is to partition a hypergraph into $k$ disjoint blocks of bounded size such that the sum of the number of blocks connected by each hyperedge is minimized. We present an improvement to the flow-based refinement framework of KaHyPar-MF, the current state-of-the-art multilevel $k$-way hypergraph partitioning algorithm for high-quality solutions. Our improvement is based on the recently proposed HyperFlowCutter algorithm for computing bipartitions of unweighted hypergraphs by solving a sequence of incremental maximum flow problems. Since vertices and hyp…
Partitioning oracles were introduced by Hassidim et al. (FOCS 2009) as a generic tool for constant-time algorithms. For any epsilon > 0, a partitioning oracle provides query access to a fixed partition of the input bounded-degree minor-free graph, in which every component has size poly(1/epsilon), and the number of edges removed is at most epsilon*n, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. However, the oracle of Hassidimet al. makes an exponential number of queries to the input graph to answer every query about the partition. In this paper, we construct an efficient partitioning oracle…
The family of judicious partitioning problems, introduced by Bollobás and Scott to the field of extremal combinatorics, has been extensively studied from a structural point of view for over two decades. This rich realm of problems aims to counterbalance the objectives of classical partitioning problems such as Min Cut, Min Bisection and Max Cut. While these classical problems focus solely on the minimization/maximization of the number of edges crossing the cut, judicious (bi)partitioning problems ask the natural question of the minimization/maximization of the number of edges lying in the (two…
Partitioning the vertices of a (hyper)graph into k roughly balanced blocks such that few (hyper)edges run between blocks is a key problem for large-scale distributed processing. A current trend for partitioning huge (hyper)graphs using low computational resources are streaming algorithms. In this work, we propose FREIGHT: a Fast stREamInG Hypergraph parTitioning algorithm which is an adaptation of the widely-known graph-based algorithm Fennel. By using an efficient data structure, we make the overall running of FREIGHT linearly dependent on the pin-count of the hypergraph and the memory consum…
We give a bi-criteria approximation algorithm for the Minimum Nonuniform Partitioning problem, recently introduced by Krauthgamer, Naor, Schwartz and Talwar (2014). In this problem, we are given a graph $G=(V,E)$ on $n$ vertices and $k$ numbers $ρ_1,\dots, ρ_k$. The goal is to partition the graph into $k$ disjoint sets $P_1,\dots, P_k$ satisfying $|P_i|\leq ρ_i n$ so as to minimize the number of edges cut by the partition. Our algorithm has an approximation ratio of $O(\sqrt{\log n \log k})$ for general graphs, and an $O(1)$ approximation for graphs with excluded minors. This is an improvement…
We describe a new approximation algorithm for Max Cut. Our algorithm runs in $\tilde O(n^2)$ time, where $n$ is the number of vertices, and achieves an approximation ratio of $.531$. On instances in which an optimal solution cuts a $1-ε$ fraction of edges, our algorithm finds a solution that cuts a $1-4\sqrtε + 8ε-o(1)$ fraction of edges. Our main result is a variant of spectral partitioning, which can be implemented in nearly linear time. Given a graph in which the Max Cut optimum is a $1-ε$ fraction of edges, our spectral partitioning algorithm finds a set $S$ of vertices and a bipartition $…
In the recent years, the scale of graph datasets has increased to such a degree that a single machine is not capable of efficiently processing large graphs. Thereby, efficient graph partitioning is necessary for those large graph applications. Traditional graph partitioning generally loads the whole graph data into the memory before performing partitioning; this is not only a time consuming task but it also creates memory bottlenecks. These issues of memory limitation and enormous time complexity can be resolved using stream-based graph partitioning. A streaming graph partitioning algorithm re…
Partitioning is a well studied research problem in the area of VLSI physical design automation. In this problem, input is an integrated circuit and output is a set of almost equal disjoint blocks. The main objective of partitioning is to assign the components of circuit to blocks in order to minimize the numbers of inter-block connections. A partitioning algorithm using hypergraph was proposed by Fiduccia and Mattheyses with linear time complexity which has been popularly known as FM algorithm. Most of the hypergraph based partitioning algorithms proposed in the literature are variants of FM a…
Given a graph $G$, the sparsest-cut problem asks to find the set of vertices $S$ which has the least expansion defined as $$ϕ_G(S) := \frac{w(E(S,\bar{S}))}{\min \set{w(S), w(\bar{S})}}, $$ where $w$ is the total edge weight of a subset. Here we study the natural generalization of this problem: given an integer $k$, compute a $k$-partition $\set{P_1, \ldots, P_k}$ of the vertex set so as to minimize $$ ϕ_k(\set{P_1, \ldots, P_k}) := \max_i ϕ_G(P_i). $$ Our main result is a polynomial time bi-criteria approximation algorithm which outputs a $(1 - \e)k$-partition of the vertex set such that each…
The graph partitioning problem has many applications in scientific computing such as computer aided design, data mining, image compression and other applications with sparse-matrix vector multiplications as a kernel operation. In many cases it is advantageous to use hypergraphs as they, compared to graphs, have a more general structure and can be used to model more complex relationships between groups of objects. This motivates our focus on the less-studied hypergraph partitioning problem. In this paper, we propose a serial multi-level bipartitioning algorithm. One important step in current he…
We consider the minimum-cut partitioning of a graph into more than two parts using spectral methods. While there exist well-established spectral algorithms for this problem that give good results, they have traditionally not been well motivated. Rather than being derived from first principles by minimizing graph cuts, they are typically presented without direct derivation and then proved after the fact to work. In this paper, we take a contrasting approach in which we start with a matrix formulation of the minimum cut problem and then show, via a relaxed optimization, how it can be mapped onto…
The objective of clustering is to discover natural groups in datasets and to identify geometrical structures which might reside there, without assuming any prior knowledge on the characteristics of the data. The problem can be seen as detecting the inherent separations between groups of a given point set in a metric space governed by a similarity function. The pairwise similarities between all data objects form a weighted graph adjacency matrix which contains all necessary information for the clustering process, which can consequently be formulated as a graph partitioning problem. In this cont…
We present a multi-level graph partitioning algorithm using novel local improvement algorithms and global search strategies transferred from the multi-grid community. Local improvement algorithms are based max-flow min-cut computations and more localized FM searches. By combining these techniques, we obtain an algorithm that is fast on the one hand and on the other hand is able to improve the best known partitioning results for many inputs. For example, in Walshaw's well known benchmark tables we achieve 317 improvements for the tables 1%, 3% and 5% imbalance. Moreover, in 118 additional cases…
Computing maximum independent sets in graphs is an important problem in computer science. In this paper, we develop an evolutionary algorithm to tackle the problem. The core innovations of the algorithm are very natural combine operations based on graph partitioning and local search algorithms. More precisely, we employ a state-of-the-art graph partitioner to derive operations that enable us to quickly exchange whole blocks of given independent sets. To enhance newly computed offsprings we combine our operators with a local search algorithm. Our experimental evaluation indicates that we are ab…
We study two mixed robust/average-case submodular partitioning problems that we collectively call Submodular Partitioning. These problems generalize both purely robust instances of the problem (namely max-min submodular fair allocation (SFA) and min-max submodular load balancing (SLB) and also generalize average-case instances (that is the submodular welfare problem (SWP) and submodular multiway partition (SMP). While the robust versions have been studied in the theory community, existing work has focused on tight approximation guarantees, and the resultant algorithms are not, in general, scal…
The sheer increase in the size of graph data has created a lot of interest into developing efficient distributed graph processing frameworks. Popular existing frameworks such as Graphlab and Pregel rely on balanced graph partitioning in order to minimize communication and achieve work balance. In this work we contribute to the recent research line of streaming graph partitioning \cite{stantonstreaming,stanton,fennel} which computes an approximately balanced $k$-partitioning of the vertex set of a graph using a single pass over the graph stream using degree-based criteria. This graph partitioni…
We study the Maximum Independent Set of Rectangles (MISR) problem, where we are given a set of axis-parallel rectangles in the plane and the goal is to select a subset of non-overlapping rectangles of maximum cardinality. In a recent breakthrough, Mitchell [2021] obtained the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for MISR. His algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of 10 and it is based on a dynamic program that intuitively recursively partitions the input plane into special polygons called corner-clipped rectangles (CCRs), without intersecting certain special horizontal line segmen…
This paper introduces a discrete relaxation for the class of combinatorial optimization problems which can be described by a set partitioning formulation under packing constraints. We present two combinatorial relaxations based on computing maximum weighted matchings in suitable graphs. Besides providing dual bounds, the relaxations are also used on a variable reduction technique and a matheuristic. We show how that general method can be tailored to sample applications, and also perform a successful computational evaluation with benchmark instances of a problem in maritime logistics.
Balanced hypergraph partitioning is a classical NP-hard optimization problem with applications in various domains such as VLSI design, simulating quantum circuits, optimizing data placement in distributed databases or minimizing communication volume in high-performance computing. Engineering parallel heuristics for this problem is a topic of recent research. Most of them are non-deterministic though. In this work, we design and implement a highly scalable deterministic algorithm in the state-of-the-art parallel partitioning framework Mt-KaHyPar. On our extensive set of benchmark instances, it …
In this paper, we consider different constrained partition problems for weighted trees and cactus graphs. We focus on the (l,u)-partition problem, which is the problem of partitioning a weighted graph into connected clusters such that each cluster fulfills the lower and upper weight constraints l and u. Partitioning into a minimum, maximum or a fixed number of clusters is known to be NP-hard in general, but polynomial-time solvable on trees. We prove that these three variants of the (l,u)-partition problem can be solved for cactus graphs as well by presenting a polynomial-time algorithm. Addit…
Max-cut, clustering, and many other partitioning problems that are of significant importance to machine learning and other scientific fields are NP-hard, a reality that has motivated researchers to develop a wealth of approximation algorithms and heuristics. Although the best algorithm to use typically depends on the specific application domain, a worst-case analysis is often used to compare algorithms. This may be misleading if worst-case instances occur infrequently, and thus there is a demand for optimization methods which return the algorithm configuration best suited for the given applica…
In the k-partition problem (k-PP), one is given an edge-weighted undirected graph, and one must partition the node set into at most k subsets, in order to minimise (or maximise) the total weight of the edges that have their end-nodes in the same cluster. Various hierarchical variants of this problem have been studied in the context of data mining. We consider a 'two-level' variant that arises in mobile wireless communications. We show that an exact algorithm based on intelligent preprocessing, cutting planes and symmetry-breaking is capable of solving small- and medium-size instances to proven…
We study the optimization version of the set partition problem (where the difference between the partition sums are minimized), which has numerous applications in decision theory literature. While the set partitioning problem is NP-hard and requires exponential complexity to solve (i.e., intractable); we formulate a weaker version of this NP-hard problem, where the goal is to find a locally optimal solution. We show that our proposed algorithms can find a locally optimal solution in near linear time. Our algorithms require neither positive nor integer elements in the input set, hence, they are…
Let ϕ(G) be the minimum conductance of an undirected graph G, and let 0=λ_1 <= λ_2 <=... <= λ_n <= 2 be the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian matrix of G. We prove that for any graph G and any k >= 2, ϕ(G) = O(k) λ_2 / \sqrt{λ_k}, and this performance guarantee is achieved by the spectral partitioning algorithm. This improves Cheeger's inequality, and the bound is optimal up to a constant factor for any k. Our result shows that the spectral partitioning algorithm is a constant factor approximation algorithm for finding a sparse cut if λ_k$ is a constant for some constant k. This provides…
