The maximum clique problem, a well-known graph-based combinatorial optimization problem, has been addressed through various algorithmic approaches, though systematic analyses of the problem instances remain sparse. This study employs the instance space analysis (ISA) methodology to systematically analyze the instance space of this problem and assess & predict the performance of state-of-the-art (SOTA) algorithms, including exact, heuristic, and graph neural network (GNN)-based methods. A dataset was compiled using graph instances from TWITTER, COLLAB and IMDB-BINARY benchmarks commonly used in graph machine learning research. A set of 33 generic and 2 problem-specific polynomial-time-computable graph-based features, including several spectral properties, was employed for the ISA. A composite performance measure incorporating both solution quality and algorithm runtime was utilized. The comparative analysis demonstrated that the exact algorithm Mixed Order Maximum Clique (MOMC) exhibited superior performance across approximately 74.7% of the instance space constituted by the compiled dataset. Gurobi & CliSAT accounted for superior performance in 13.8% and 11% of the instance space, respectively. The ISA-based algorithm performance prediction model run on 34 challenging test instances compiled from the BHOSLIB and DIMACS datasets yielded top-1 and top-2 best performing algorithm prediction accuracies of 88% and 97%, respectively.
Node Classification via Simplicial Interaction with Augmented Maximal Clique Selection
Department of Big Data Convergence, Chonnam National University（convergence大数据部门，全州国民大学）；Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue University（Daniels商学院，普渡大学）
ARM-Explainer -- Explaining and improving graph neural network predictions for the maximum clique problem using node features and association rule mining
School of Computational Science and Engineering（计算科学与工程学院）；DeGroote School of Business（德格罗特商学院）
Given an undirected graph $G = (V,E)$ with a set $V$ of vertices and a set $E$ of edges, the minimum sum coloring problem (MSCP) is to find a legal vertex coloring of $G$, using colors represented by natural numbers $1, 2, . . .$ such that the total sum of the colors assigned to the vertices is minimized. This paper describes an approach based on the decomposition of the original graph into disjoint cliques for computing lower bounds for the MSCP. Basically, the proposed approach identifies and removes at each extraction iteration a maximum number of cliques of the same size (the largest possi…
Heidelberg University（海德堡大学）；University of Vienna（维也纳大学）；Hamilton College（汉密尔顿学院）
We propose improved exact and heuristic algorithms for solving the maximum weight clique problem, a well-known problem in graph theory with many applications. Our algorithms interleave successful techniques from related work with novel data reduction rules that use local graph structure to identify and remove vertices and edges while retaining the optimal solution. We evaluate our algorithms on a range of synthetic and real-world graphs, and find that they outperform the current state of the art on most inputs. Our data reductions always produce smaller reduced graphs than existing data reduct…
The maximal clique enumeration (MCE) problem has numerous applications in biology, chemistry, sociology, and graph modeling. Though this problem is well studied, most current research focuses on finding solutions in large sparse graphs or very dense graphs, while sacrificing efficiency on the most difficult medium-density benchmark instances that are representative of data sets often encountered in practice. We show that techniques that have been successfully applied to the maximum clique problem give significant speed gains over the state-of-the-art MCE algorithms on these instances. Specific…
We study the following variant of the classic {\em bin packing} problem. Given a set of items of various sizes, partitioned into groups, find a packing of the items in a minimum number of identical (unit-size) bins, such that no two items of the same group are assigned to the same bin. This problem, known as {\em bin packing with clique-graph conflicts}, has natural applications in storing file replicas, security in cloud computing and signal distribution. Our main result is an {\em asymptotic polynomial time approximation scheme (APTAS)} for the problem, improving upon the best known ratio of…
In the EDGE CLIQUE COVER (ECC) problem, given a graph G and an integer k, we ask whether the edges of G can be covered with k complete subgraphs of G or, equivalently, whether G admits an intersection model on k-element universe. Gramm et al. [JEA 2008] have shown a set of simple rules that reduce the number of vertices of G to 2^k, and no algorithm is known with significantly better running time bound than a brute-force search on this reduced instance. In this paper we show that the approach of Gramm et al. is essentially optimal: we present a polynomial time algorithm that reduces an arbitra…
The maximum labelled clique problem is a variant of the maximum clique problem where edges in the graph are given labels, and we are not allowed to use more than a certain number of distinct labels in a solution. We introduce a new branch-and-bound algorithm for the problem, and explain how it may be parallelised. We evaluate an implementation on a set of benchmark instances, and show that it is consistently faster than previously published results, sometimes by four or five orders of magnitude.
Given simple undirected graph G = (V, E), the Maximum Clique Problem(MCP) is that of finding a maximum-cardinality subset Q of V such that any two vertices in Q are adjacent. We present a modified local search algorithm for this problem. Our algorithm build some maximal solution and can determine in polynomial time if a maximal solution can be improved by replacing a single vertex with k, k > 1, others. We test our algorithms on DIMACS[5], Sloane[15], BHOSLIB[1], Iovanella[8] and our random instances.
We present a distributed randomized algorithm finding Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) of a given graph in O(1) rounds, with high probability, in the Congested Clique model. The input graph in the Congested Clique model is a graph of n nodes, where each node initially knows only its incident edges. The communication graph is a clique with limited edge bandwidth: each two nodes (not necessarily neighbours in the input graph) can exchange $O(\log n)$ bits. As in previous works, the key part of the MST algorithm is an efficient Connected Components (CC) algorithm. However, unlike the former approaches…
In this paper, it is demonstrated that the DNA-based algorithm [Ho et al. 2005] for solving an instance of the clique problem to any a graph G = (V, E) with n vertices and p edges and its complementary graph G1 = (V, E1) with n vertices and m = (((n*(n-1))/2)-p) edges can be implemented by Hadamard gates, NOT gates, CNOT gates, CCNOT gates, Grover's operators, and quantum measurements on a quantum computer. It is also demonstrated that if Grovers algorithm is employed to accomplish the readout step in the DNA-based algorithm, the quantum implementation of the DNA-based algorithm is equivalent …
University of Catania（卡塔尼亚大学）；Nokia Bell Labs（诺基亚贝尔实验室）；Eaton Corp.（伊顿公司）；University College Dublin（都柏林大学学院）
We propose a multi-stage learning approach for pruning the search space of maximum clique enumeration, a fundamental computationally difficult problem arising in various network analysis tasks. In each stage, our approach learns the characteristics of vertices in terms of various neighborhood features and leverage them to prune the set of vertices that are likely not contained in any maximum clique. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our approach is domain independent -- the same small set of features works well on graph instances from different domain. Compared to the state-of-the-art heuristic…
We propose a fast, parallel maximum clique algorithm for large sparse graphs that is designed to exploit characteristics of social and information networks. The method exhibits a roughly linear runtime scaling over real-world networks ranging from 1000 to 100 million nodes. In a test on a social network with 1.8 billion edges, the algorithm finds the largest clique in about 20 minutes. Our method employs a branch and bound strategy with novel and aggressive pruning techniques. For instance, we use the core number of a vertex in combination with a good heuristic clique finder to efficiently rem…
The maximum clique problem is a well known NP-Hard problem with applications in data mining, network analysis, informatics, and many other areas. Although there exist several algorithms with acceptable runtimes for certain classes of graphs, many of them are infeasible for massive graphs. We present a new exact algorithm that employs novel pruning techniques to very quickly find maximum cliques in large sparse graphs. Extensive experiments on several types of synthetic and real-world graphs show that our new algorithm is up to several orders of magnitude faster than existing algorithms for mos…
Mining groups of genes that consistently co-express is an important problem in biomedical research, where it is critical for applications such as drug-repositioning and designing new disease treatments. Recently, Cooley et al. modeled this problem as Exact Weighted Clique Decomposition (EWCD) in which, given an edge-weighted graph $G$ and a positive integer $k$, the goal is to decompose $G$ into at most $k$ (overlapping) weighted cliques so that an edge's weight is exactly equal to the sum of weights for cliques it participates in. They show EWCD is fixed-parameter-tractable, giving a $4^k$-ke…
Temporal graphs have been recently introduced to model changes to a given network that occur throughout a fixed period of time. The Temporal $Δ$ Clique problem, that generalizes the well known Clique problem to temporal graphs, has been studied in the context of finding nodes of interest in dynamic networks [TCS '16]. We introduce the Temporal $Δ$ Independent Set problem, a temporal generalization of Independent Set. This problem is e.g. motivated in the context of finding conflict-free schedules for maximum subsets of tasks, that have certain (changing) constraints on each day they need to be…
Counting instances of specific subgraphs in a larger graph is an important problem in graph mining. Finding cliques of size k (k-cliques) is one example of this NP-hard problem. Different algorithms for clique counting avoid counting the same clique multiple times by pivoting or ordering the graph. Ordering-based algorithms include an ordering step to direct the edges in the input graph, and a counting step, which is dominated by building node or edge-induced subgraphs. Of the ordering-based algorithms, kClist is the state-of-the art algorithm designed to work on sparse real-world graphs. Desp…
Censor-Hillel et al. [PODC'15] recently showed how to efficiently implement centralized algebraic algorithms for matrix multiplication in the congested clique model, a model of distributed computing that has received increasing attention in the past few years. This paper develops further algebraic techniques for designing algorithms in this model. We present deterministic and randomized algorithms, in the congested clique model, for efficiently computing multiple independent instances of matrix products, computing the determinant, the rank and the inverse of a matrix, and solving systems of li…
The field of kernelization studies polynomial-time preprocessing routines for hard problems in the framework of parameterized complexity. Although a framework for proving kernelization lower bounds has been discovered in 2008 and successfully applied multiple times over the last three years, establishing kernelization complexity of many important problems remains open. In this paper we show that, unless NP is a subset of coNP/poly and the polynomial hierarchy collapses up to its third level, the following parameterized problems do not admit a polynomial-time preprocessing algorithm that reduce…
Bodlaender and Koster (Discrete Mathematics 2006) introduced the notion of almost-clique separators in the context of computing the treewidth $\tw(G)$ of a given graph $G$. A separator $S \subseteq V(G)$ of $G$ is an \emph{almost-clique separator} if $S \setminus \{v\}$ is a clique of $G$ for some $v \in S$. $S$ is a \emph{minimal separator} if $S$ has at least two full components, where a full component of $S$ is a connected component $C$ of $G \setminus S$ such that $N_G(C) = S$. They observed that if $S$ is an almost-clique minimal separator of $G$ then $\tw(G \cup K(S)) = \tw(G)$, where $K…
Given a set ${\cal R}=\{R_1,R_2,..., R_n\}$ of $n$ randomly positioned axis parallel rectangles in 2D, the problem of computing the minimum clique cover (MCC) and maximum independent set (MIS) for the intersection graph $G({\cal R})$ of the members in $\cal R$ are both computationally hard \cite{CC05}. For the MCC problem, it is proved that polynomial time constant factor approximation is impossible to obtain \cite{PT11}. Though such a result is not proved yet for the MIS problem, no polynomial time constant factor approximation algorithm exists in the literature. We study the performance of g…
As it follows from Gödel's incompleteness theorems, any consistent formal system of axioms and rules of inference should imply a true unprovable statement. Actually, this fundamental principle can be efficiently applicable in computational mathematics and complexity theory concerning the computational complexity of problems from the class NP, particularly and especially the NP-complete ones. While there is a wide set of algorithms for these problems that we call heuristic, the correctness or/and complexity of each concrete algorithm (or the probability of its correct and polynomial-time work) …
We revisit the complexity of the classical $k$-Coloring problem parameterized by clique-width. This is a very well-studied problem that becomes highly intractable when the number of colors $k$ is large. However, much less is known on its complexity for small, concrete values of $k$. In this paper, we completely determine the complexity of $k$-Coloring parameterized by clique-width for any fixed $k$, under the SETH. Specifically, we show that for all $k\ge 3,ε>0$, $k$-Coloring cannot be solved in time $O^*((2^k-2-ε)^{cw})$, and give an algorithm running in time $O^*((2^k-2)^{cw})$. Thus, if the…
We present a new way to encode weighted sums into unweighted pairwise constraints, obtaining the following results. - Define the k-SUM problem to be: given n integers in [-n^2k, n^2k] are there k which sum to zero? (It is well known that the same problem over arbitrary integers is equivalent to the above definition, by linear-time randomized reductions.) We prove that this definition of k-SUM remains W[1]-hard, and is in fact W[1]-complete: k-SUM can be reduced to f(k) * n^o(1) instances of k-Clique. - The maximum node-weighted k-Clique and node-weighted k-dominating set problems can be reduce…
A seminal work of Jerrum (1992) showed that large cliques elude the Metropolis process. More specifically, Jerrum showed that the Metropolis algorithm cannot find a clique of size $k=Θ(n^α), α\in (0,1/2)$, which is planted in the Erdős-Rényi random graph $G(n,1/2)$, in polynomial time. Information theoretically it is possible to find such planted cliques as soon as $k \ge (2+ε) \log n$. Since the work of Jerrum, the computational problem of finding a planted clique in $G(n,1/2)$ was studied extensively and many polynomial time algorithms were shown to find the planted clique if it is of size $…
We prove three new lower bounds for graph connectivity in the $1$-bit broadcast congested clique model, BCC$(1)$. First, in the KT-$0$ version of BCC$(1)$, in which nodes are aware of neighbors only through port numbers, we show an $Ω(\log n)$ round lower bound for CONNECTIVITY even for constant-error randomized Monte Carlo algorithms. The deterministic version of this result can be obtained via the well-known "edge-crossing" argument, but, the randomized version of this result requires establishing new combinatorial results regarding the indistinguishability graph induced by inputs. In our se…
We tackle the problem of counting the number of $k$-cliques in large-scale graphs, for any constant $k \ge 3$. Clique counting is essential in a variety of applications, among which social network analysis. Due to its computationally intensive nature, we settle for parallel solutions in the MapReduce framework, which has become in the last few years a {\em de facto} standard for batch processing of massive data sets. We give both theoretical and experimental contributions. On the theory side, we design the first exact scalable algorithm for counting (and listing) $k$-cliques. Our algorithm use…
In a (parameterized) graph edge modification problem, we are given a graph $G$, an integer $k$ and a (usually well-structured) class of graphs $\mathcal{G}$, and ask whether it is possible to transform $G$ into a graph $G' \in \mathcal{G}$ by adding and/or removing at most $k$ edges. Parameterized graph edge modification problems received considerable attention in the last decades. In this paper, we focus on finding small kernels for edge modification problems. One of the most studied problems is the Cluster Editing problem, in which the goal is to partition the vertex set into a disjoint unio…
We study the complexity of Maximum Clique in intersection graphs of convex objects in the plane. On the algorithmic side, we extend the polynomial-time algorithm for unit disks [Clark '90, Raghavan and Spinrad '03] to translates of any fixed convex set. We also generalize the efficient polynomial-time approximation scheme (EPTAS) and subexponential algorithm for disks [Bonnet et al. '18, Bonamy et al. '18] to homothets of a fixed centrally symmetric convex set. The main open question on that topic is the complexity of Maximum Clique in disk graphs. It is not known whether this problem is NP-ha…
For almost two decades the question of whether tabu search (TS) or simulated annealing (SA) performs better for the quadratic assignment problem has been unresolved. To answer this question satisfactorily, we compare performance at various values of targeted solution quality, running each heuristic at its optimal number of iterations for each target. We find that for a number of varied problem instances, SA performs better for higher quality targets while TS performs better for lower quality targets.
Consider a dynamic programming scheme for a decision problem in which all subproblems involved are also decision problems. An implementation of such a scheme is {\em positive-instance driven} (PID), if it generates positive subproblem instances, but not negative ones, building each on smaller positive instances. We take the dynamic programming scheme due to Bouchitté and Todinca for treewidth computation, which is based on minimal separators and potential maximal cliques, and design a variant (for the decision version of the problem) with a natural PID implementation. The resulting algorithm p…
Until recently, techniques for obtaining lower bounds for kernelization were one of the most sought after tools in the field of parameterized complexity. Now, after a strong influx of techniques, we are in the fortunate situation of having tools available that are even stronger than what has been required in their applications so far. Based on a result of Fortnow and Santhanam (JCSS 2011), Bodlaender et al. (JCSS 2009) showed that, unless NP \subseteq coNP/poly, the existence of a deterministic polynomial-time composition algorithm, i.e., an algorithm which outputs an instance of bounded param…
An intense activity is nowadays devoted to the definition of models capturing the properties of complex networks. Among the most promising approaches, it has been proposed to model these graphs via their clique incidence bipartite graphs. However, this approach has, until now, severe limitations resulting from its incapacity to reproduce a key property of this object: the overlapping nature of cliques in complex networks. In order to get rid of these limitations we propose to encode the structure of clique overlaps in a network thanks to a process consisting in iteratively factorising the maxi…
Nokia Bell Labs（诺基亚贝尔实验室）；Eaton Corp.（伊顿公司）；University of Catania（卡塔尼亚大学）；University College Dublin（都柏林大学学院）
Combinatorial optimization problems arise in a wide range of applications from diverse domains. Many of these problems are NP-hard and designing efficient heuristics for them requires considerable time and experimentation. On the other hand, the number of optimization problems in the industry continues to grow. In recent years, machine learning techniques have been explored to address this gap. We propose a framework for leveraging machine learning techniques to scale-up exact combinatorial optimization algorithms. In contrast to the existing approaches based on deep-learning, reinforcement le…
We show an $\tilde{O}(n^{p/(p+2)})$-round algorithm in the \congest model for \emph{listing} of $K_p$ (a clique with $p$ nodes), for all $p =4, p\geq 6$. For $p = 5$, we show an $\tilde{O}(n^{3/4})$-round algorithm. For $p=4$ and $p=5$, our results improve upon the previous state-of-the-art of $O(n^{5/6+o(1)})$ and $O(n^{21/22+o(1)})$, respectively, by Eden et al. [DISC 2019]. For all $p\geq 6$, ours is the first sub-linear round algorithm for $K_p$ listing. We leverage the recent expander decomposition algorithm of Chang et al. [SODA 2019] to create clusters with a good mixing time. Three key…
We study the Steiner tree problem on map graphs, which substantially generalize planar graphs as they allow arbitrarily large cliques. We obtain a PTAS for Steiner tree on map graphs, which builds on the result for planar edge weighted instances of Borradaile et al. The Steiner tree problem on map graphs can be casted as a special case of the planar node-weighted Steiner tree problem, for which only a 2.4-approximation is known. We prove and use a contraction decomposition theorem for planar node weighted instances. This readily reduces the problem of finding a PTAS for planar node-weighted St…
In the last decade, the power of the state-of-the-art SAT and Integer Programming solvers has dramatically increased. They implement many new techniques and heuristics and since any NP problem can be converted to SAT or ILP instance, we could take advantage of these techniques in general by converting the instance of NP problem to SAT formula or Integer program. A problem we consider, in this proof of concept, is finding a largest clique in a graph. We ran several experiments on large random graphs and compared 3 approaches: Optimised backtrack solution, Translation to SAT and Translation to I…
A graph is called (claw,diamond)-free if it contains neither a claw (a $K_{1,3}$) nor a diamond (a $K_4$ with an edge removed) as an induced subgraph. Equivalently, (claw,diamond)-free graphs can be characterized as line graphs of triangle-free graphs, or as linear dominoes, i.e., graphs in which every vertex is in at most two maximal cliques and every edge is in exactly one maximal clique. In this paper we consider the parameterized complexity of the (claw,diamond)-free Edge Deletion problem, where given a graph $G$ and a parameter $k$, the question is whether one can remove at most $k$ edges…
We study tensor networks as a model of arithmetic computation for evaluating multilinear maps. These capture any algorithm based on low border rank tensor decompositions, such as $O(n^{ω+ε})$ time matrix multiplication, and in addition many other algorithms such as $O(n \log n)$ time discrete Fourier transform and $O^*(2^n)$ time for computing the permanent of a matrix. However tensor networks sometimes yield faster algorithms than those that follow from low-rank decompositions. For instance the fastest known $O(n^{(ω+ε)t})$ time algorithms for counting $3t$-cliques can be implemented with ten…
