Evaluating and Tuning n-fold Integer Programming

Authors Katerina Altmanová, Dusan Knop , Martin Koutecký



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Author Details

Katerina Altmanová
  • Department of Applied Mathematics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Dusan Knop
  • Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway and, Department of Applied Mathematics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Martin Koutecký
  • Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

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Katerina Altmanová, Dusan Knop, and Martin Koutecký. Evaluating and Tuning n-fold Integer Programming. In 17th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2018). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 103, pp. 10:1-10:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2018) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2018.10

Abstract

In recent years, algorithmic breakthroughs in stringology, computational social choice, scheduling, etc., were achieved by applying the theory of so-called n-fold integer programming. An n-fold integer program (IP) has a highly uniform block structured constraint matrix. Hemmecke, Onn, and Romanchuk [Math. Programming, 2013] showed an algorithm with runtime a^{O(rst + r^2s)} n^3, where a is the largest coefficient, r,s, and t are dimensions of blocks of the constraint matrix and n is the total dimension of the IP; thus, an algorithm efficient if the blocks are of small size and with small coefficients. The algorithm works by iteratively improving a feasible solution with augmenting steps, and n-fold IPs have the special property that augmenting steps are guaranteed to exist in a not-too-large neighborhood. However, this algorithm has never been implemented and evaluated.
We have implemented the algorithm and learned the following along the way. The original algorithm is practically unusable, but we discover a series of improvements which make its evaluation possible. Crucially, we observe that a certain constant in the algorithm can be treated as a tuning parameter, which yields an efficient heuristic (essentially searching in a smaller-than-guaranteed neighborhood). Furthermore, the algorithm uses an overly expensive strategy to find a "best" step, while finding only an "approximatelly best" step is much cheaper, yet sufficient for quick convergence. Using this insight, we improve the asymptotic dependence on n from n^3 to n^2 log n which yields the currently asymptotically fastest algorithm for n-fold IP.
Finally, we tested the behavior of the algorithm with various values of the tuning parameter and different strategies of finding improving steps. First, we show that decreasing the tuning parameter initially leads to an increased number of iterations needed for convergence and eventually to getting stuck in local optima, as expected. However, surprisingly small values of the parameter already exhibit good behavior. Second, our new strategy for finding "approximatelly best" steps wildly outperforms the original construction.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Software and its engineering → Software design engineering
  • Theory of computation → Parameterized complexity and exact algorithms
Keywords
  • n-fold integer programming
  • integer programming
  • analysis of algorithms
  • primal heuristic
  • local search

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