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oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:18828 2024-03-06T11:02:40Z ddc:004 open_access

Approximating Submodular k-Partition via Principal Partition Sequence Chandrasekaran, Karthekeyan Wang, Weihang Approximation algorithms In submodular k-partition, the input is a submodular function f:2^V → ℝ_{≥ 0} (given by an evaluation oracle) along with a positive integer k and the goal is to find a partition of the ground set V into k non-empty parts V_1, V_2, …, V_k in order to minimize ∑_{i=1}^k f(V_i). Narayanan, Roy, and Patkar [Narayanan et al., 1996] designed an algorithm for submodular k-partition based on the principal partition sequence and showed that the approximation factor of their algorithm is 2 for the special case of graph cut functions (which was subsequently rediscovered by Ravi and Sinha [R. Ravi and A. Sinha, 2008]). In this work, we study the approximation factor of their algorithm for three subfamilies of submodular functions - namely monotone, symmetric, and posimodular and show the following results: 1) The approximation factor of their algorithm for monotone submodular k-partition is 4/3. This result improves on the 2-factor that was known to be achievable for monotone submodular k-partition via other algorithms. Moreover, our upper bound of 4/3 matches the recently shown lower bound under polynomial number of function evaluation queries [Santiago, 2021]. Our upper bound of 4/3 is also the first improvement beyond 2 for a certain graph partitioning problem that is a special case of monotone submodular k-partition. 2) The approximation factor of their algorithm for symmetric submodular k-partition is 2. This result generalizes their approximation factor analysis beyond graph cut functions. 3) The approximation factor of their algorithm for posimodular submodular k-partition is 2. We also construct an example to show that the approximation factor of their algorithm for arbitrary submodular functions is Ω(n/k). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Karthekeyan Chandrasekaran and Weihang Wang 2023 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 275, Approximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization. Algorithms and Techniques (APPROX/RANDOM 2023) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2023.3 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-188284 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.APPROX/RANDOM.2023.3 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode