License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2021.65
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-141341
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2021/14134/
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Fotakis, Dimitris ; Kostopanagiotis, Panagiotis ; Nakos, Vasileios ; Piliouras, Georgios ; Skoulakis, Stratis

On the Approximability of Multistage Min-Sum Set Cover

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LIPIcs-ICALP-2021-65.pdf (0.8 MB)

Abstract

We investigate the polynomial-time approximability of the multistage version of Min-Sum Set Cover (Mult-MSSC), a natural and intriguing generalization of the classical List Update problem. In Mult-MSSC, we maintain a sequence of permutations (π⁰, π¹, …, π^T) on n elements, based on a sequence of requests ℛ = (R¹, …, R^T). We aim to minimize the total cost of updating π^{t-1} to π^{t}, quantified by the Kendall tau distance d_{KT}(π^{t-1}, π^t), plus the total cost of covering each request R^t with the current permutation π^t, quantified by the position of the first element of R^t in π^t.
Using a reduction from Set Cover, we show that Mult-MSSC does not admit an O(1)-approximation, unless P = NP, and that any o(log n) (resp. o(r)) approximation to Mult-MSSC implies a sublogarithmic (resp. o(r)) approximation to Set Cover (resp. where each element appears at most r times). Our main technical contribution is to show that Mult-MSSC can be approximated in polynomial-time within a factor of O(log² n) in general instances, by randomized rounding, and within a factor of O(r²), if all requests have cardinality at most r, by deterministic rounding.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{fotakis_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2021.65,
  author =	{Fotakis, Dimitris and Kostopanagiotis, Panagiotis and Nakos, Vasileios and Piliouras, Georgios and Skoulakis, Stratis},
  title =	{{On the Approximability of Multistage Min-Sum Set Cover}},
  booktitle =	{48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021)},
  pages =	{65:1--65:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-195-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{198},
  editor =	{Bansal, Nikhil and Merelli, Emanuela and Worrell, James},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2021/14134},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-141341},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2021.65},
  annote =	{Keywords: Approximation Algorithms, Multistage Min-Sum Set Cover, Multistage Optimization Problems}
}

Keywords: Approximation Algorithms, Multistage Min-Sum Set Cover, Multistage Optimization Problems
Collection: 48th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2021)
Issue Date: 2021
Date of publication: 02.07.2021

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