An n-town, n@?N, is a group of n buildings, each occupying a distinct position on a 2-dimensional integer grid. If we measure the distance between two buildings along the axis-parallel street grid, then an n-town has optimal shape if the sum of all pairwise Manhattan distances is minimized. This problem has been studied for cities, i.e., the limiting case of very large n. For cities, it is known that the optimal shape can be described by a differential equation, for which no closed-form solution is known. We show that optimal n-towns can be computed in O(n^7^.^5) time. This is also practically useful, as it allows us to compute optimal solutions up to n=80.
Another related problem is called or . The goal is to separate a graph into @math clusters to minimize the sum of pairwise distances between nodes in the same cluster. For general graphs, @cite_1 show that this problem is NP-hard to approximate within any constant factor for @math . In a metric space the problem is easier to approximate: @cite_20 give a @math -approximation, @cite_10 gives a PTAS for @math , and @cite_3 give an @math -approximation for general @math .
@cite_10 @cite_3 @cite_1 @cite_20
2143654071 2038964811 2018165630 2063545374
We consider the problem of clustering a collection of elements based on pairwise judgments of similarity and dissimilarity. N. (2002) cast the problem thus: given a graph G whose edges are labeled "+" (similar) or "-" (dissimilar), partition the vertices into clusters so that the number of pairs correctly (resp. incorrectly) classified with respect to the input labeling is maximized (resp. minimized). Complete graphs, where the classifier labels every edge, and general graphs, where some edges are not labeled, are both worth studying. We answer several questions left open by N. (2002) and provide a sound overview of clustering with qualitative information. We give a factor 4 approximation for minimization on complete graphs, and a factor O(log n) approximation for general graphs. For the maximization version, a PTAS for complete graphs is shown by N. (2002); we give a factor 0.7664 approximation for general graphs, noting that a PTAS is unlikely by proving APX-hardness. We also prove the APX-hardness of minimization on complete graphs. In the 0-extension problem, we are given a weighted graph with some nodes marked as terminals and a semimetric on the set of terminals. Our goal is to assign the rest of the nodes to terminals so as to minimize the sum, over all edges, of the product of the edge's weight and the distance between the terminals to which its endpoints are assigned. This problem generalizes the multiway cut problem of [SIAM J. Comput. , 23 (1994), pp. 864--894] and is closely related to the metric labeling problem introduced by Kleinberg and Tardos [Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, New York, 1999, pp. 14--23]. We present approximation algorithms for 0-Extension . In arbitrary graphs, we present a O(log k)-approximation algorithm, k being the number of terminals. We also give O(1)-approximation guarantees for weighted planar graphs. Our results are based on a natural metric relaxation of the problem previously considered by Karzanov [European J. Combin., 19 (1998), pp. 71--101]. It is similar in flavor to the linear programming relaxation of Garg, Vazirani, and Yannakakis [SIAM J. Comput. , 25 (1996), pp. 235--251] for the multicut problem, and similar to relaxations for other graph partitioning problems. We prove that the integrality ratio of the metric relaxation is at least @math for a positive c for infinitely many k. Our results improve some of the results of Kleinberg and Tardos, and they further our understanding on how to use metric relaxations. We consider @math -median clustering in finite metric spaces and @math -means clustering in Euclidean spaces, in the setting where @math is part of the input (not a constant). For the @math -means problem, show that if the optimal @math -means clustering of the input is more expensive than the optimal @math -means clustering by a factor of @math , then one can achieve a @math -approximation to the @math -means optimal in time polynomial in @math and @math by using a variant of Lloyd's algorithm. In this work we substantially improve this approximation guarantee. We show that given only the condition that the @math -means optimal is more expensive than the @math -means optimal by a factor @math for some constant @math , we can obtain a PTAS. In particular, under this assumption, for any @math we achieve a @math -approximation to the @math -means optimal in time polynomial in @math and @math , and exponential in @math and @math . We thus decouple the strength of the assumption from the quality of the approximation ratio. We also give a PTAS for the @math -median problem in finite metrics under the analogous assumption as well. For @math -means, we in addition give a randomized algorithm with improved running time of @math . Our technique also obtains a PTAS under the assumption of that all @math approximations are @math -close to a desired target clustering, in the case that all target clusters have size greater than @math and @math is constant. Note that the motivation of is that for many clustering problems, the objective function is only a proxy for the true goal of getting close to the target. From this perspective, our improvement is that for @math -means in Euclidean spaces we reduce the distance of the clustering found to the target from @math to @math when all target clusters are large, and for @math -median we improve the largeness'' condition needed in the work of to get exactly @math -close from @math to @math . Our results are based on a new notion of clustering stability. Abstract We consider the problem of placing a specified number ( p ) of facilities on the nodes of a network so as to minimize some measure of the distances between facilities. This type of problem models a number of problems arising in facility location, statistical clustering, pattern recognition, and processor allocation problems in multiprocessor systems. We consider the problem under three different objectives, namely minimizing the diameter, minimizing the average distance, and minimizing the variance. We observe that, in general, the problem is NP -hard under any of the objectives. Further, even obtaining a constant factor approximation for any of the objectives is NP -hard. We present a general framework for obtaining near-optimal solutions to the compact location problems for the above measures, when the distances satisfy the triangle inequality. We show that this framework can be extended to the case when there are also node weights. Further, we investigate the complexity and approximability of more general versions of these problems, where two distance values are specified for each pair of potential sites. In these cases, the goal is to a select a specified number of facilities to minimize a function of one distance metric subject to a budget constraint on the other distance metric. We present algorithms that provide solutions which are within a small constant factor of the objective value while violating the budget constraint by only a small constant factor.