Discrepancy measures how uniformly distributed a point set is with respect to a given set of ranges. There are two notions of discrepancy, namely continuous discrepancy and combinatorial discrepancy. Depending on the ranges, several possible variants arise, for example star discrepancy, box discrepancy, and discrepancy of half-spaces. In this paper, we investigate the hardness of these problems with respect to the dimension d of the underlying space. All these problems are solvable in time n^O(d) , but such a time dependency quickly becomes intractable for high-dimensional data. Thus it is interesting to ask whether the dependency on d can be moderated. We answer this question negatively by proving that the canonical decision problems are W[1]-hard with respect to the dimension. This is done via a parameterized reduction from the Clique problem. As the parameter stays linear in the input parameter, the results moreover imply that these problems require n^ (d) time, unless 3-Sat can be solved in 2^o(n) time. Further, we derive that testing whether a given set is an -net with respect to half-spaces takes n^ (d) time under the same assumption. As intermediate results, we discover the W[1]-hardness of other well known problems, such as determining the largest empty star inside the unit cube. For this, we show that it is even hard to approximate within a factor of 2^n .
The problem has been studied extensively in the planar case, see for example @cite_24 and references therein. When the dimension is part of the input, the problem has only recently been shown to be @math -hard by @cite_11 and the fastest exact algorithm runs in time @math @cite_11 . Also recently, @cite_7 gave an @math -time @math -approximation algorithm for this problem. Note that, since @math for some @math , this counts as fpt time in parameters @math and @math , in contrast to our results for . The NP-hardness of the problem was shown by @cite_4 .
@cite_24 @cite_4 @cite_7 @cite_11
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An important question in theoretical computer science is to determine the best possible running time for solving a problem at hand. For geometric optimization problems, we often understand their complexity on a rough scale, but not very well on a finer scale. One such example is the two-dimensional knapsack problem for squares. There is a polynomial time (1 + ϵ)-approximation algorithm for it (i.e., a PTAS) but the running time of this algorithm is triple exponential in 1 ϵ, i.e., Ω(n221 ϵ). A double or triple exponential dependence on 1 ϵ is inherent in how this and several other algorithms for other geometric problems work. In this paper, we present an EPTAS for knapsack for squares, i.e., a (1+ϵ)-approximation algorithm with a running time of Oϵ(1)·nO(1). In particular, the exponent of n in the running time does not depend on ϵ at all! Since there can be no FPTAS for the problem (unless P = NP) this is the best kind of approximation scheme we can hope for. To achieve this improvement, we introduce two new key ideas: We present a fast method to guess the Ω(221 ϵ) relatively large squares of a suitable near-optimal packing instead of using brute-force enumeration. Secondly, we introduce an indirect guessing framework to define sizes of cells for the remaining squares. In the previous PTAS each of these steps needs a running time of Ω(n221 ϵ) and we improve both to Oϵ(1) · nO(1). We complete our result by giving an algorithm for two-dimensional knapsack for rectangles under (1 + ϵ)-resource augmentation. In this setting, we also improve the best known running time of Ω(n1 ϵ1 ϵ) to Oϵ(1) · nO(1) and compute even a solution with optimal profit, in contrast to the best previously known polynomial time algorithm for this setting that computes only an approximation. We believe that our new techniques have the potential to be useful for other settings as well. There are many classical problems in P whose time complexities have not been improved over the past decades. Recent studies of "Hardness in P" have revealed that, for several of such problems, the current fastest algorithm is the best possible under some complexity assumptions. To bypass this difficulty, (SODA 2017) introduced the concept of fully polynomial FPT algorithms. For a problem with the current best time complexity @math , the goal is to design an algorithm running in @math time for a parameter @math and a constant @math . In this paper, we investigate the complexity of graph problems in P parameterized by tree-depth, a graph parameter related to tree-width. We show that a simple divide-and-conquer method can solve many graph problems, including Weighted Matching, Negative Cycle Detection, Minimum Weight Cycle, Replacement Paths, and 2-hop Cover, in @math time or @math time, where @math is the tree-depth of the input graph. Because any graph of tree-width @math has tree-depth at most @math , our algorithms also run in @math time or @math time. These results match or improve the previous best algorithms parameterized by tree-width. Especially, we solve an open problem of fully polynomial FPT algorithm for Weighted Matching parameterized by tree-width posed by par>We prove some non-approximability results for restrictions of basic combinatorial optimization problems to instances of bounded “degreeror bounded “width.” Specifically: We prove that the Max 3SAT problem on instances where each variable occurs in at most B clauses, is hard to approximate to within a factor @math , unless @math . H stad [18] proved that the problem is approximable to within a factor @math in polynomial time, and that is hard to approximate to within a factor @math . Our result uses a new randomized reduction from general instances of Max 3SAT to bounded-occurrences instances. The randomized reduction applies to other Max SNP problems as well. We observe that the Set Cover problem on instances where each set has size at most B is hard to approximate to within a factor @math unless @math . The result follows from an appropriate setting of parameters in Feige's reduction [11]. This is essentially tight in light of the existence of @math -approximate algorithms [20, 23, 9] We present a new PCP construction, based on applying parallel repetition to the inner verifier,'' and we provide a tight analysis for it. Using the new construction, and some modifications to known reductions from PCP to Hitting Set, we prove that Hitting Set with sets of size B is hard to approximate to within a factor @math . The problem can be approximated to within a factor B [19], and it is the Vertex Cover problem for B =2. The relationship between hardness of approximation and set size seems to have not been explored before. We observe that the Independent Set problem on graphs having degree at most B is hard to approximate to within a factor @math , unless P = NP . This follows from a comination of results by Clementi and Trevisan [28] and Reingold, Vadhan and Wigderson [27]. It had been observed that the problem is hard to approximate to within a factor @math unless P = NP [1]. An algorithm achieving factor @math is also known [21, 2, 30, 16 . We present a polynomial time approximation scheme for Euclidean TSP in fixed dimensions. For every fixed c > 1 and given any n nodes in R 2 , a randomized version of the scheme finds a (1 + 1 c )-approximation to the optimum traveling salesman tour in O(n (log n ) O(c) ) time. When the nodes are in R d , the running time increases to O(n (log n ) (O( d c)) d-1 ). For every fixed c, d the running time is n • poly(log n ), that is nearly linear in n . The algorithmm can be derandomized, but this increases the running time by a factor O(n d ). The previous best approximation algorithm for the problem (due to Christofides) achieves a 3 2-aproximation in polynomial time. We also give similar approximation schemes for some other NP-hard Euclidean problems: Minimum Steiner Tree, k -TSP, and k -MST. (The running times of the algorithm for k -TSP and k -MST involve an additional multiplicative factor k .) The previous best approximation algorithms for all these problems achieved a constant-factor approximation. We also give efficient approximation schemes for Euclidean Min-Cost Matching, a problem that can be solved exactly in polynomial time. All our algorithms also work, with almost no modification, when distance is measured using any geometric norm (such as e p for p ≥ 1 or other Minkowski norms). They also have simple parallel (i.e., NC) implementations.