For some computational problems (e.g., product configuration, planning, diagnosis, query answering, phylogeny reconstruction) computing a set of similar diverse solutions may be desirable for better decision-making. With this motivation, we studied several decision optimization versions of this problem in the context of Answer Set Programming (ASP), analyzed their computational complexity, and introduced offline online methods to compute similar diverse solutions of such computational problems with respect to a given distance function. All these methods rely on the idea of computing solutions to a problem by means of finding the answer sets for an ASP program that describes the problem. The offline methods compute all solutions in advance using the ASP formulation of the problem with an ASP solver, like Clasp, and then identify similar diverse solutions using clustering methods. The online methods compute similar diverse solutions following one of the three approaches: by reformulating the ASP representation of the problem to compute similar diverse solutions at once using an ASP solver; by computing similar diverse solutions iteratively (one after other) using an ASP solver; by modifying the search algorithm of an ASP solver to compute similar diverse solutions incrementally. We modified Clasp to implement the last online method and called it Clasp-NK. In the first two online methods, the given distance function is represented in ASP; in the last one it is implemented in C++. We showed the applicability and the effectiveness of these methods on reconstruction of similar diverse phylogenies for Indo-European languages, and on several planning problems in Blocks World. We observed that in terms of computational efficiency the last online method outperforms the others; also it allows us to compute similar diverse solutions when the distance function cannot be represented in ASP.
As for the computational complexity analysis of these problems, the authors find out that they are all -complete; these results comply with the ones presented in subject to conditions under which the problems of @cite_23 @cite_31 above are equivalent to the problems we study in this paper.
@cite_31 @cite_23
2107105629 1973652906 2135625884 2000931246
Various approaches for keyword proximity search have been implemented in relational databases, XML and the Web. Yet, in all of them, an answer is a Q-fragment, namely, a subtree T of the given data graph G, such that T contains all the keywords of the query Q and has no proper subtree with this property. The rank of an answer is inversely proportional to its weight. Three problems are of interest: finding an optimal (i.e., top-ranked) answer, computing the top-k answers and enumerating all the answers in ranked order. It is shown that, under data complexity, an efficient algorithm for solving the first problem is sufficient for solving the other two problems with polynomial delay. Similarly, an efficient algorithm for finding a θ-approximation of the optimal answer suffices for carrying out the following two tasks with polynomial delay, under query-and-data complexity. First, enumerating in a (θ+1)-approximate order. Second, computing a (θ+1)-approximation of the top-k answers. As a corollary, this paper gives the first efficient algorithms, under data complexity, for enumerating all the answers in ranked order and for computing the top-k answers. It also gives the first efficient algorithms, under query-and-data complexity, for enumerating in a provably approximate order and for computing an approximation of the top-k answers. In a maximum-r-constraint satisfaction problem with variables x1, x2, ... ,xn , we are given Boolean functions f1, f2, ..., fm each involving r of the n variables and are to find the maximum number of these functions that can be made true by a truth assignment to the variables. We show that for r fixed, there is an integer q ∈ O(log(1 e) e4) such that if we choose q variables (uniformly) at random, the answer to the subproblem induced on the chosen variables is, with high probability, within an additive error of eqr of qr nr times the answer to the original n-variable problem. The previous best result for the case of r = 2 (which includes many graph problems) was that there is an algorithm which given the induced sub-problem on q = O(1 e5) variables, can find an approximation to the answer to the whole problem within additive error en2. For r≥3, the conference version of this paper (in: Proceedings of the 34th ACM STOC, ACM, New York, 2002, pp. 232-239) and independently Andersson and Engebretsen give the first results with sample complexity q dependent only polynomially upon 1 e. Their algorithm has a sample complexity q of O(1 e7). They (as also the earlier papers) however do not directly prove any relation between the answer to the sub-problem and the whole problem as we do here. Our method also differs from other results in that it is linear algebraic, rather than combinatorial in nature. 1. Summary In Part I, four ostensibly different theoretical models of induction are presented, in which the problem dealt with is the extrapolation of a very long sequence of symbols—presumably containing all of the information to be used in the induction. Almost all, if not all problems in induction can be put in this form. Some strong heuristic arguments have been obtained for the equivalence of the last three models. One of these models is equivalent to a Bayes formulation, in which a priori probabilities are assigned to sequences of symbols on the basis of the lengths of inputs to a universal Turing machine that are required to produce the sequence of interest as output. Though it seems likely, it is not certain whether the first of the four models is equivalent to the other three. Few rigorous results are presented. Informal investigations are made of the properties of these models. There are discussions of their consistency and meaningfulness, of their degree of independence of the exact nature of the Turing machine used, and of the accuracy of their predictions in comparison to those of other induction methods. In Part II these models are applied to the solution of three problems—prediction of the Bernoulli sequence, extrapolation of a certain kind of Markov chain, and the use of phrase structure grammars for induction. Though some approximations are used, the first of these problems is treated most rigorously. The result is Laplace's rule of succession. The solution to the second problem uses less certain approximations, but the properties of the solution that are discussed, are fairly independent of these approximations. The third application, using phrase structure grammars, is least exact of the three. First a formal solution is presented. Though it appears to have certain deficiencies, it is hoped that presentation of this admittedly inadequate model will suggest acceptable improvements in it. This formal solution is then applied in an approximate way to the determination of the “optimum” phrase structure grammar for a given set of strings. The results that are obtained are plausible, but subject to the uncertainties of the approximation used. Let f be a random Boolean formula that is an instance of 3-SAT. We consider the problem of computing the least real number k such that if the ratio of the number of clauses over the number of variables of f strictly exceeds k , then f is almost certainly unsatisfiable. By a well-known and more or less straightforward argument, it can be shown that kF5.191. This upper bound was improved by to 4.758 by first providing new improved bounds for the occupancy problem. There is strong experimental evidence that the value of k is around 4.2. In this work, we define, in terms of the random formula f, a decreasing sequence of random variables such that, if the expected value of any one of them converges to zero, then f is almost certainly unsatisfiable. By letting the expected value of the first term of the sequence converge to zero, we obtain, by simple and elementary computations, an upper bound for k equal to 4.667. From the expected value of the second term of the sequence, we get the value 4.601q . In general, by letting the U This work was performed while the first author was visiting the School of Computer Science, Carleton Ž University, and was partially supported by NSERC Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council . of Canada , and by a grant from the University of Patras for sabbatical leaves. The second and third Ž authors were supported in part by grants from NSERC Natural Sciences and Engineering Research . Council of Canada . During the last stages of this research, the first and last authors were also partially Ž . supported by EU ESPRIT Long-Term Research Project ALCOM-IT Project No. 20244 . †An extended abstract of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the Fourth Annual European Ž Symposium on Algorithms, ESA’96, September 25]27, 1996, Barcelona, Spain Springer-Verlag, LNCS, . pp. 27]38 . That extended abstract was coauthored by the first three authors of the present paper. Correspondence to: L. M. Kirousis Q 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 1042-9832r98r030253-17 253