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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.13

Line Cover and Related Problems

Authors: Matthias Bentert, Fedor V. Fomin, Petr A. Golovach, Souvik Saha, Sanjay Seetharaman, and Anannya Upasana

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract

We study several extensions of the classic Line Cover problem of covering a set of n points in the plane with k lines. Line Cover is known to be NP-hard and our focus is on two natural generalizations: (1) Line Clustering, where the objective is to find k lines in the plane that minimize the sum of squares of distances of a given set of input points to the closest line, and (2) Hyperplane Cover, where the goal is to cover n points in ℝ^d by k hyperplanes. We also consider the more general Projective Clustering problem, which unifies both of these and has numerous applications in machine learning, data mining, and computational geometry. In this problem one seeks k affine subspaces of dimension r minimizing the sum of squares of distances of a given set of n points in ℝ^d to the closest point within one of the k affine subspaces. Our main contributions reveal interesting differences in the parameterized complexity of these problems. While Line Cover is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the number k of lines in the solution, we show that Line Clustering is W[1]-hard when parameterized by k and rule out algorithms of running time n^{o(k)} under the Exponential Time Hypothesis. Hyperplane Cover is known to be NP-hard even when d = 2 and by the work of Langerman and Morin [Discrete & Computational Geometry, 2005], it is FPT parameterized by k and d. We complement this result by establishing that Hyperplane Cover is W[2]-hard when parameterized by only k. We complement our hardness results by presenting an algorithm for Projective Clustering. We show that this problem is solvable in n^{𝒪(dk(r+1))} time. Not only does this yield an upper bound for Line Clustering that asymptotically matches our lower bound, but it also significantly extends the seminal work on k-Means Clustering (the special case r = 0) by Inaba, Katoh, and Imai [SoCG 1994].

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Matthias Bentert, Fedor V. Fomin, Petr A. Golovach, Souvik Saha, Sanjay Seetharaman, and Anannya Upasana. Line Cover and Related Problems. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 13:1-13:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bentert_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.13,
  author =	{Bentert, Matthias and Fomin, Fedor V. and Golovach, Petr A. and Saha, Souvik and Seetharaman, Sanjay and Upasana, Anannya},
  title =	{{Line Cover and Related Problems}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{13:1--13:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255023},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: Point Line Cover, Projective Clustering, W-hardness, XP algorithm}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2025.42

Parameterized Reunion with Achromatic Number

Authors: Satyabrata Jana, Souvik Saha, Saket Saurabh, and Anannya Upasana

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 359, 36th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2025)

Abstract

In this paper, we study the Achromatic Number problem. Given a graph G and an integer k, the task is to determine whether there exists a proper coloring of G, using at least k colors, in which every pair of distinct colors appears on the endpoints of some edge. It was established early on that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT)- even before the formal development of parameterized complexity. In fact, Farber, Hahn, Hell, and Miller [JCTB, 1986] devised an algorithm with a running time of 𝒪(f(k) ⋅ |E(G)|). Although the exact form of f(k) was not specified, it appears to be at least doubly exponential in k. In our work, we first present an algorithm with an explicit dependence on k, and then introduce another algorithm that is parameterized by the vertex cover number of the graph. More formally, we show the following. - Achromatic Number is solvable in time 2^𝒪(k⁵)+𝒪(|E(G)|). - Achromatic Number admits a polynomial kernel when the input is restricted to a d-degenerate graph and a more efficient kernel on trees. - We also study the parameterized complexity of the problem with respect to Vertex Cover and show that it admits an FPT algorithm running in time 2^𝒪(𝓁²) ⋅ n^𝒪(1), where 𝓁 is the size of a vertex cover.

Cite as

Satyabrata Jana, Souvik Saha, Saket Saurabh, and Anannya Upasana. Parameterized Reunion with Achromatic Number. In 36th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 359, pp. 42:1-42:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{jana_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2025.42,
  author =	{Jana, Satyabrata and Saha, Souvik and Saurabh, Saket and Upasana, Anannya},
  title =	{{Parameterized Reunion with Achromatic Number}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2025)},
  pages =	{42:1--42:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-408-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{359},
  editor =	{Chen, Ho-Lin and Hon, Wing-Kai and Tsai, Meng-Tsung},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2025.42},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-249502},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2025.42},
  annote =	{Keywords: Achromatic number, Coloring, Fixed-parameter tractability, Kernelization, Lower bound, W-hardness}
}

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Line Cover and Related Problems

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Parameterized Reunion with Achromatic Number

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