We continue the investigation of problems concerning correlation clustering or clustering with qualitative information, which is a clustering formulation that has been studied recently. The basic setup here is that we are given as input a complete graph on n nodes (which correspond to nodes to be clustered) whose edges are labeled + (for similar pairs of items) and - (for dissimilar pairs of items). Thus we have only as input qualitative information on similarity and no quantitative distance measure between items. The quality of a clustering is measured in terms of its number of agreements, which is simply the number of edges it correctly classifies, that is the sum of number of - edges whose endpoints it places in different clusters plus the number of + edges both of whose endpoints it places within the same cluster. In this paper, we study the problem of finding clusterings that maximize the number of agreements, and the complementary minimization version where we seek clusterings that minimize the number of disagreements. We focus on the situation when the number of clusters is stipulated to be a small constant k. Our main result is that for every k, there is a polynomial time approximation scheme for both maximizing agreements and minimizing disagreements. (The problems are NP-hard for every k >= 2.) The main technical work is for the minimization version, as the PTAS for maximizing agreements follows along the lines of the property tester for Max k-CUT. In contrast, when the number of clusters is not specified, the problem of minimizing disagreements was shown to be APX-hard, even though the maximization version admits a PTAS.
The problems on general graphs have also received attention. It is known that both and are APX-hard @cite_7 @cite_11 . Using a connection to minimum multicut, several groups @cite_11 @cite_19 @cite_15 presented an @math approximation algorithm for . In fact, it was noted in @cite_15 that the problem is as hard to approximate as minimum multicut (and so this @math factor seems very hard to improve). For the maximization version, algorithms with performance ratio better than @math are known for @cite_11 @cite_3 . The latter work by Swamy @cite_3 shows that a factor @math approximation can also be achieved when the number of clusters is specified (i.e., for k for @math ).
@cite_7 @cite_3 @cite_19 @cite_15 @cite_11
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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. 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 the best known algorithms for approximating the minimum-size undirected @math -edge connected spanning subgraph. For simple graphs our approximation ratio is @math . The more precise version of this bound requires @math , and for all such @math it improves the long-standing performance ratio of Cheriyan and Thurimella [SIAM J. Comput., 30 (2000), pp. 528-560], @math . The improvement comes in two steps. First we show that for simple @math -edge connected graphs, any laminar family of degree @math sets is smaller than the general bound ( @math versus @math ). This immediately implies that iterated rounding improves the performance ratio of Cheriyan and Thurimella. The second step carefully chooses good edges for rounding. For multigraphs our approximation ratio is @math . This improves the previous ratio @math [H. N. Gabow, M. X. Goemans, E. Tardos, and D. P. Williamson, Networks, 53 (2009), pp. 345-357]. It is of interest since it is known that for some constant @math , an approximation ratio @math implies @math . Our approximation ratio extends to the minimum-size Steiner network problem, where @math denotes the average vertex demand. The algorithm exploits rounding properties of the first two linear programs in iterated rounding. 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.