Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Computer Science
Supervisor
Professor Roberto Solis-Oba
Abstract
In this research we study the use of local search in the design of approximation algorithms for NP-hard optimization problems. For our study we have selected several well-known clustering problems: k-facility location problem, minimum mutliway cut problem, and constrained maximum k-cut problem.
We show that by careful use of the local optimality property of the solutions produced by local search algorithms it is possible to bound the ratio between solutions produced by local search approximation algorithms and optimum solutions. This ratio is known as the locality gap.
The locality gap of our algorithm for the k-uncapacitated facility location problem is 2+sqrt(3) +epsilon for any constant epsilon >0. This matches the approximation ratio of the best known algorithm for the problem, proposed by Zhang but our algorithm is simpler. For the minimum multiway cut problem our algorithm has locality gap 2-2/k, which matches the approximation ratio of the isolation heuristic of Dahlhaus et al; however, our experimental results show that in practice our local search algorithm greatly outperforms the isolation heuristic, and furthermore it has comparable performance as that of the three currently best algorithms for the minimum multiway cut problem. For the constrained maximum k-cut problem on hypergraphs we proposed a local search based approximation algorithm with locality gap 1-1/k for a variety of constraints imposed on the k-cuts. The locality gap of our algorithm matches the approximation ratio of the best known algorithm for the max k-cut problem on graphs designed by Vazirani, but our algorithm is more general.
Recommended Citation
Samei, Nasim, "Local Search Approximation Algorithms for Clustering Problems" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6138.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6138