In a column-restricted covering integer program (CCIP), all the non-zero entries of any column of the constraint matrix are equal. Such programs capture capacitated versions of covering problems. In this paper, we study the approximability of CCIPs, in particular, their relation to the integrality gaps of the underlying 0,1-CIP. If the underlying 0,1-CIP has an integrality gap O(γ), and assuming that the integrality gap of the priority version of the 0,1-CIP is O(ω), we give a factor O(γ+ω) approximation algorithm for the CCIP. Priority versions of 0,1-CIPs (PCIPs) naturally capture quality of service type constraints in a covering problem. We investigate priority versions of the line (PLC) and the (rooted) tree cover (PTC) problems. Apart from being natural objects to study, these problems fall in a class of fundamental geometric covering problems. We bound the integrality of certain classes of this PCIP by a constant. Algorithmically, we give a polytime exact algorithm for PLC, show that the PTC problem is APX-hard, and give a factor 2-approximation algorithm for it.
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 give a worst-case analysis for two greedy heuristics for the integer programming problem minimize cx , Ax (ge) b , 0 (le) x (le) u , x integer, where the entries in A, b , and c are all nonnegative. The first heuristic is for the case where the entries in A and b are integral, the second only assumes the rows are scaled so that the smallest nonzero entry is at least 1. In both cases we compare the ratio of the value of the greedy solution to that of the integer optimal. The error bound grows logarithmically in the maximum column sum of A for both heuristics. The Lova´sz local lemma due to Erdods and Lova´sz (Infinite and Finite Sets, Colloq. Math. Soc. J. Bolyai 11, 1975, pp. 609-627) is a powerful tool in proving the existence of rare events. We present an extension of this lemma, which works well when the event to be shown to exist is a conjunction of individual events, each of which asserts that a random variable does not deviate much from its mean. As applications, we consider two classes of NP-hard integer programs: minimax and covering integer programs. A key technique, randomized rounding of linear relaxations, was developed by Raghavan and Thompson (Combinatorica, 7 (1987), pp. 365-374) to derive good approximation algorithms for such problems. We use our extension of the local lemma to prove that randomized rounding produces, with nonzero probability, much better feasible solutions than known before, if the constraint matrices of these integer programs are column-sparse (e.g., routing using short paths, problems on hypergraphs with small dimension degree). This complements certain well-known results from discrepancy theory. We also generalize the method of pessimistic estimators due to Raghavan (J. Comput. System Sci., 37 (1988), pp. 130-143), to obtain constructive (algorithmic) versions of our results for covering integer programs. Given matrices A and B and vectors a, b, c and d, all with non-negative entries, we consider the problem of computing min c^Tx:[email protected]?Z"+^n,Ax>=a,Bx==a) and multiplicity constraints (x= Several important NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems can be posed as packing covering integer programs; the randomized rounding technique of Raghavan and Thompson is a powerful tool with which to approximate them well. We present one elementary unifying property of all these integer linear programs and use the FKG correlation inequality to derive an improved analysis of randomized rounding on them. This yields a pessimistic estimator, thus presenting deterministic polynomial-time algorithms for them with approximation guarantees that are significantly better than those known. We propose a heuristic that delivers in @math steps a solution for the set covering problem the value of which does not exceed the maximum number of sets covering an element times the optimal value. We build on the classical greedy sequential set cover algorithm, in the spirit of the primal-dual schema, to obtain simple parallel approximation algorithms for the set cover problem and its generalizations. Our algorithms use randomization, and our randomized voting lemmas may be of independent interest. Fast parallel approximation algorithms were known before for set cover, though not for any of its generalizations. >