In this work, we study k-min-sum-of-radii (k-MSR) clustering under mergeable constraints. k-MSR seeks to group data points using a set of up to k balls, such that the sum of the radii of the balls is minimized. A clustering constraint is called mergeable if merging two clusters satisfying the constraint, results in a cluster that also satisfies the constraint. Many popularly studied constraints are mergeable, including fairness constraints and lower bound constraints. In our work, we design a (4+ε)-approximation for k-MSR under any given mergeable constraint with runtime 2^{O(k/(ε)⋅log²k/ε)} n⁴, i.e., fixed-parameter tractable in k for constant ε. Our result directly improves upon the FPT (6+ε)-approximation by Carta et al. [Carta et al., 2024]. We also provide a hardness result that excludes the exact solvability of k-MSR under any given mergeable constraint in time f(k)n^o(k), assuming ETH is true.

We prove a robust contraction decomposition theorem for $H$-minor-free graphs, which states that given an $H$-minor-free graph $G$ and an integer $p$, one can partition in polynomial time the vertices of $G$ into $p$ sets $Z_1,\dots,Z_p$ such that $\operatorname{tw}(G/(Z_i \setminus Z')) = O(p + |Z'|)$ for all $i \in [p]$ and $Z' \subseteq Z_i$. Here, $\operatorname{tw}(\cdot)$ denotes the treewidth of a graph and $G/(Z_i \setminus Z')$ denotes the graph obtained from $G$ by contracting all edges with both endpoints in $Z_i \setminus Z'$. Our result generalizes earlier results by Klein [SICOMP 2008] and Demaine et al. [STOC 2011] based on partitioning $E(G)$, and some recent theorems for planar graphs by Marx et al. [SODA 2022], for bounded-genus graphs (more generally, almost-embeddable graphs) by Bandyapadhyay et al. [SODA 2022], and for unit-disk graphs by Bandyapadhyay et al. [SoCG 2022]. The robust contraction decomposition theorem directly results in parameterized algorithms with running time $2^{\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{k})} \cdot n^{O(1)}$ or $n^{O(\sqrt{k})}$ for every vertex/edge deletion problems on $H$-minor-free graphs that can be formulated as Permutation CSP Deletion or 2-Conn Permutation CSP Deletion. Consequently, we obtain the first subexponential-time parameterized algorithms for Subset Feedback Vertex Set, Subset Odd Cycle Transversal, Subset Group Feedback Vertex Set, 2-Conn Component Order Connectivity on $H$-minor-free graphs. For other problems which already have subexponential-time parameterized algorithms on $H$-minor-free graphs (e.g., Odd Cycle Transversal, Vertex Multiway Cut, Vertex Multicut, etc.), our theorem gives much simpler algorithms of the same running time.

The Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problem with Neighborhoods (ETSPN) is a well-studied problem in computational geometry and has a wealth of results. In this problem, given a set of geometric neighborhoods (or regions), the goal is to compute a shortest route that visits at least one point of each neighborhood. The problem is a generalization of the standard Euclidean TSP and hence is also NP-hard, even when the neighborhoods are disjoint unit disks or unit squares in the plane. A longstanding open problem on this topic is the existence of PTASes for ETSPN with unit disk (and unit square) neighborhoods. Prior to this work, the best-known approximation factor for unit disks is 6.75, and PTASes are only known for the special case where the unit disks/squares are of bounded depth, i.e., each point lies in at most a constant number of disks.

Geometric matching is an important topic in computational geometry and has been extensively studied over decades. In this paper, we study a geometric-matching problem, known as geometric many-to-many matching. In this problem, the input is a set S of n colored points in ℝ^d, which implicitly defines a graph G = (S,E(S)) where E(S) = {(p,q): p,q ∈ S have different colors}, and the goal is to compute a minimum-cost subset E^* ⊆ E(S) of edges that cover all points in S. Here the cost of E^* is the sum of the costs of all edges in E^*, where the cost of a single edge e is the Euclidean distance (or more generally, the L_p-distance) between the two endpoints of e. Our main result is a (1+ε)-approximation algorithm with an optimal running time O_ε(n log n) for geometric many-to-many matching in any fixed dimension, which works under any L_p-norm. This is the first near-linear approximation scheme for the problem in any d ≥ 2. Prior to this work, only the bipartite case of geometric many-to-many matching was considered in ℝ¹ and ℝ², and the best known approximation scheme in ℝ² takes O_ε(n^{1.5} ⋅ poly(log n)) time.

In the Euclidean Bottleneck Steiner Tree problem, the input consists of a set of n points in ℝ2 called terminals and a parameter k, and the goal is to compute a Steiner tree that spans all the terminals and contains at most k points of ℝ2 as Steiner points such that the maximum edge-length of the Steiner tree is minimized, where the length of a tree edge is the Euclidean distance between its two endpoints. The problem is well-studied and is known to be NP-hard. In this paper, we give a kO(k)nO(1)-time algorithm for Euclidean Bottleneck Steiner Tree, which implies that the problem is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT). This settles an open question explicitly asked by Bae et al. [Algorithmica, 2011], who showed that the ℓ1 and ℓ∞ variants of the problem are FPT. Our approach can be generalized to the problem with ℓp metric for any rational 1 ≤ ρ ≤ ∞, or even other metrics on ℝ2.

Fair clustering is a constrained clustering problem where we need to partition a set of colored points. The fraction of points of each color in every cluster should be more or less equal to the fraction of points of this color in the dataset. The problem was recently introduced by Chierichetti et al. [NeurIPS 2017]. We propose a new construction of coresets for fair clustering for Euclidean and general metrics based on random sampling. For the Euclidean space Rd, we provide the first coreset whose size does not depend exponentially on the dimension d. The question of whether such constructions exist was asked by Schmidt, Schwiegelshohn, and Sohler [WAOA 2019] and Huang, Jiang, and Vishnoi [NeurIPS 2019]. For general metrics, our construction provides the first coreset for fair clustering. New coresets appear to be a handy tool for designing better approximation and streaming algorithms for fair and other constrained clustering variants.

We prove a structural theorem for unit-disk graphs, which (roughly) states that given a set \(\mathcal{D}\) of \(n\) unit disks inducing a unit-disk graph \(G_{\mathcal{D}}\) and a number \(p\in[n]\) , one can partition \(\mathcal{D}\) into \(p\) subsets \(\mathcal{D}_{1},\dots,\mathcal{D}_{p}\) such that for every \(i\in[p]\) and every \(\mathcal{D}^{\prime}\subseteq\mathcal{D}_{i}\) , the graph obtained from \(G_{\mathcal{D}}\) by contracting all edges between the vertices in \(\mathcal{D}_{i}\backslash\mathcal{D}^{\prime}\) admits a tree decomposition in which each bag consists of \(O(p+|\mathcal{D}^{\prime}|)\) cliques. Our theorem can be viewed as an analog for unit-disk graphs of the structural theorems for planar graphs and almost-embeddable graphs proved recently by Marx et al. [SODA ’22] and Bandyapadhyay et al. [SODA ’22]. By applying our structural theorem, we give several new combinatorial and algorithmic results for unit-disk graphs. On the combinatorial side, we obtain the first Contraction Decomposition Theorem for unit-disk graphs, resolving an open question in the work by Panolan et al. [SODA ’19]. On the algorithmic side, we obtain a new algorithm for bipartization (also known as odd cycle transversal) on unit-disk graphs, which runs in \(2^{O(\sqrt{k}\log k)}\cdot n^{O(1)}\) time, where \(k\) denotes the solution size. Our algorithm significantly improves the previous slightly subexponential-time algorithm given by Lokshtanov et al. [SODA ’22] which runs in \(2^{O(k^{27/28})}\cdot n^{O(1)}\) time. We also show that the problem cannot be solved in \(2^{o(\sqrt{k})}\cdot n^{O(1)}\) time assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis, which implies that our algorithm is almost optimal.

Designing coresets - small-space sketches of the data preserving cost of the solutions within (1± ε)-approximate factor - is an important research direction in the study of center-based k-clustering problems, such as k-means or k-median. Feldman and Langberg [STOC'11] have shown that for k-clustering of n points in general metrics, it is possible to obtain coresets whose size depends logarithmically in n. Moreover, such a dependency in n is inevitable in general metrics. A significant amount of recent work in the area is devoted to obtaining coresests whose sizes are independent of n for special metrics, like d-dimensional Euclidean space [Huang, Vishnoi, STOC'20], doubling metrics [Huang, Jiang, Li, Wu, FOCS'18], metrics of graphs of bounded treewidth [Baker, Braverman, Huang, Jiang, Krauthgamer, Wu, ICML’20], or graphs excluding a fixed minor [Braverman, Jiang, Krauthgamer, Wu, SODA’21]. In this paper, we provide the first constructions of coresets whose size does not depend on n for k-clustering in the metrics induced by geometric intersection graphs. For example, we obtain (k log²k)/ε^𝒪(1) size coresets for k-clustering in Euclidean-weighted unit-disk graphs (UDGs) and unit-square graphs (USGs). These constructions follow from a general theorem that identifies two canonical properties of a graph metric sufficient for obtaining coresets whose size is independent of n. The proof of our theorem builds on the recent work of Cohen-Addad, Saulpic, and Schwiegelshohn [STOC '21], which ensures small-sized coresets conditioned on the existence of an interesting set of centers, called centroid set. The main technical contribution of our work is the proof of the existence of such a small-sized centroid set for graphs that satisfy the two canonical properties. Loosely speaking, the metrics of geometric intersection graphs are "similar" to the Euclidean metrics for points that are close, and to the shortest path metrics of planar graphs for points that are far apart. The main technical challenge in constructing centroid sets of small sizes is in combining these two very different metrics. The new coreset construction helps to design the first (1+ε)-approximation for center-based clustering problems in UDGs and USGs, that is fixed-parameter tractable in k and ε (FPT-AS).

We revisit a natural variant of geometric set cover, called minimum-membership geometric set cover (MMGSC). In this problem, the input consists of a set $S$ of points and a set $\mathcal{R}$ of geometric objects, and the goal is to find a subset $\mathcal{R}^*\subseteq\mathcal{R}$ to cover all points in $S$ such that the \textit{membership} of $S$ with respect to $\mathcal{R}^*$, denoted by $\mathsf{memb}(S,\mathcal{R}^*)$, is minimized, where $\mathsf{memb}(S,\mathcal{R}^*)=\max_{p\in S}|\{R\in\mathcal{R}^*: p\in R\}|$. We achieve the following two main results. * We give the first polynomial-time constant-approximation algorithm for MMGSC with unit squares. This answers a question left open since the work of Erlebach and Leeuwen [SODA'08], who gave a constant-approximation algorithm with running time $n^{O(\mathsf{opt})}$ where $\mathsf{opt}$ is the optimum of the problem (i.e., the minimum membership). * We give the first polynomial-time approximation scheme (PTAS) for MMGSC with halfplanes. Prior to this work, it was even unknown whether the problem can be approximated with a factor of $o(\log n)$ in polynomial time, while it is well-known that the minimum-size set cover problem with halfplanes can be solved in polynomial time. We also consider a problem closely related to MMGSC, called minimum-ply geometric set cover (MPGSC), in which the goal is to find $\mathcal{R}^*\subseteq\mathcal{R}$ to cover $S$ such that the ply of $\mathcal{R}^*$ is minimized, where the ply is defined as the maximum number of objects in $\mathcal{R}^*$ which have a nonempty common intersection. Very recently, Durocher et al. gave the first constant-approximation algorithm for MPGSC with unit squares which runs in $O(n^{12})$ time. We give a significantly simpler constant-approximation algorithm with near-linear running time.

Clustering with capacity constraints is a fundamental problem that attracted significant attention throughout the years. In this paper, we give the first FPT constant-factor approximation algorithm for the problem of clustering points in a general metric into $k$ clusters to minimize the sum of cluster radii, subject to non-uniform hard capacity constraints. In particular, we give a $(15+ε)$-approximation algorithm that runs in $2^{0(k^2\log k)}\cdot n^3$ time. When capacities are uniform, we obtain the following improved approximation bounds: A (4 + $ε$)-approximation with running time $2^{O(k\log(k/ε))}n^3$, which significantly improves over the FPT 28-approximation of Inamdar and Varadarajan [ESA 2020]; a (2 + $ε$)-approximation with running time $2^{O(k/ε^2 \cdot\log(k/ε))}dn^3$ and a $(1+ε)$-approximation with running time $2^{O(kd\log ((k/ε)))}n^{3}$ in the Euclidean space; and a (1 + $ε$)-approximation in the Euclidean space with running time $2^{O(k/ε^2 \cdot\log(k/ε))}dn^3$ if we are allowed to violate the capacities by (1 + $ε$)-factor. We complement this result by showing that there is no (1 + $ε$)-approximation algorithm running in time $f(k)\cdot n^{O(1)}$, if any capacity violation is not allowed.

k-means and k-median clustering are powerful unsupervised machine learning techniques. However, due to complicated dependencies on all the features, it is challenging to interpret the resulting cluster assignments. Moshkovitz, Dasgupta, Rashtchian, and Frost proposed an elegant model of explainable k-means and k-median clustering in ICML 2020. In this model, a decision tree with k leaves provides a straightforward characterization of the data set into clusters. We study two natural algorithmic questions about explainable clustering. (1) For a given clustering, how to find the “best explanation” by using a decision tree with k leaves? (2) For a given set of points, how to find a decision tree with k leaves minimizing the k-means/median objective of the resulting explainable clustering? To address the first question, we introduce a new model of explainable clustering. Our model, inspired by the notion of outliers in robust statistics, is the following. We are seeking a small number of points (outliers) whose removal makes the existing clustering well-explainable. For addressing the second question, we initiate the study of the model of Moshkovitz et al. from the perspective of multivariate complexity. Our rigorous algorithmic analysis sheds some light on the influence of parameters like the input size, dimension of the data, the number of outliers, the number of clusters, and the approximation ratio, on the computational complexity of explainable clustering.

Abstract In this work, we study the k-median clustering problem with an additional equal-size constraint on the clusters from the perspective of parameterized preprocessing. Our main result is the first lossy (2-approximate) polynomial kernel for this problem parameterized by the cost of clustering. We complement this result by establishing lower bounds for the problem that eliminate the existence of an (exact) kernel of polynomial size and a PTAS.

k-means and k-median clustering are powerful unsupervised machine learning techniques. However, due to complicated dependences on all the features, it is challenging to interpret the resulting cluster assignments. Moshkovitz, Dasgupta, Rashtchian, and Frost proposed an elegant model of explainable k-means and k-median clustering in ICML 2020. In this model, a decision tree with k leaves provides a straightforward characterization of the data set into clusters. We study two natural algorithmic questions about explainable clustering. (1) For a given clustering, how to find the ``best explanation'' by using a decision tree with k leaves? (2) For a given set of points, how to find a decision tree with k leaves minimizing the k-means/median objective of the resulting explainable clustering? To address the first question, we introduce a new model of explainable clustering. Our model, inspired by the notion of outliers in robust statistics, is the following. We are seeking a small number of points (outliers) whose removal makes the existing clustering well-explainable. For addressing the second question, we initiate the study of the model of Moshkovitz et al. from the perspective of multivariate complexity. Our rigorous algorithmic analysis sheds some light on the influence of parameters like the input size, dimension of the data, the number of outliers, the number of clusters, and the approximation ratio, on the computational complexity of explainable clustering.

k-center is one of the most popular clustering models. While it admits a simple 2-approximation in polynomial time in general metrics, the Euclidean version is NP-hard to approximate within a factor of 1.93, even in the plane, if one insists the dependence on k in the running time be polynomial. Without this restriction, a classic algorithm yields a 2^{O((klog k)/{epsilon})}dn-time (1+epsilon)-approximation for Euclidean k-center, where d is the dimension. In this work, we give a faster algorithm for small dimensions: roughly speaking an O^*(2^{O((1/epsilon)^{O(d)} k^{1-1/d} log k)})-time (1+epsilon)-approximation. In particular, the running time is roughly O^*(2^{O((1/epsilon)^{O(1)}sqrt{k}log k)}) in the plane. We complement our algorithmic result with a matching hardness lower bound. We also consider a well-studied generalization of k-center, called Non-uniform k-center (NUkC), where we allow different radii clusters. NUkC is NP-hard to approximate within any factor, even in the Euclidean case. We design a 2^{O(klog k)}n^2 time 3-approximation for NUkC, and a 2^{O((klog k)/epsilon)}dn time (1+\epsilon)-approximation for Euclidean NUkC. The latter time bound matches the bound for k-center.

In this paper, we consider the Minimum-Load k-Clustering/Facility Location (MLkC) problem where we are given a set P of n points in a metric space that we have to cluster and an integer k > 0 that denotes the number of clusters. Additionally, we are given a set F of cluster centers in the same metric space. The goal is to select a set C ⊆ F of k centers and assign each point in P to a center in C, such that the maximum load over all centers is minimized. Here the load of a center is the sum of the distances between it and the points assigned to it. Although clustering/facility location problems have rich literature, the minimum-load objective has not been studied substantially, and hence MLkC has remained a poorly understood problem. More interestingly, the problem is notoriously hard even in some special cases including the one in line metrics as shown by Ahmadian et al. [APPROX 2014, ACM Trans. Algorithms 2018]. They also show APX-hardness of the problem in the plane. On the other hand, the best-known approximation factor for MLkC is O(k), even in the plane. In this work, we study a fair version of MLkC inspired by the work of Chierichetti et al. [NeurIPS, 2017]. Here the input points are partitioned into 𝓁 protected groups, and only clusters that proportionally represent each group are allowed. MLkC is the special case with 𝓁 = 1. For the fair version, we are able to obtain a randomized 3-approximation algorithm in f(k,𝓁)⋅ n^O(1) time. Also, our scheme leads to an improved (1 + ε)-approximation in the case of Euclidean norm with the same running time (depending also linearly on the dimension d). Our results imply the same approximations for MLkC with running time f(k)⋅ n^O(1), achieving the first constant-factor FPT approximations for this problem in general and Euclidean metric spaces.

We design the first subexponential-time (parameterized) algorithms for several cut and cycle-hitting problems on H-minor free graphs. In particular, we obtain the following results (where k is the solution-size parameter). time algorithms for Edge Bipartization and Odd Cycle Transversal; a time algorithm for Edge Multiway Cut and a time algorithm for Vertex Multiway Cut (with undeletable terminals), where r is the number of terminals to be separated; a time algorithm for Edge Multicut and a time algorithm for Vertex Multicut (with undeletable terminals), where r is the number of terminal pairs to be separated; a time algorithm for Group Feedback Edge Set and a time algorithm for Group Feedback Vertex Set, where g is the size of the group. In addition, our approach also gives time algorithms for all above problems with the exception of time for Edge/Vertex Multicut and time for Group Feedback Edge/Vertex Set. All of our FPT algorithms (the first four items above) are randomized, as they use known randomized kernelization algorithms as sub-routines. We obtain our results by giving a new decomposition theorem on graphs of bounded genus, or more generally, an h-almost-embeddable graph for an arbitrary but fixed constant h. Our new decomposition theorem generalizes known Contraction Decomposition Theorem. Prior studies on this topic exhibited that the classes of planar graphs [Klein, SICOMP, 2008], graphs of bounded genus [Demaine, Hajiaghayi and Mohar, Combinatorica 2010] and H-minor free graphs [Demaine, Hajiaghayi and Kawarabayashi, STOC 2011] admit a Contraction Decomposition Theorem. In particular we show the following. Let G be a graph of bounded genus, or more generally, an h-almost-embeddable graph for an arbitrary but fixed constant h. Then for every p ∊ ℕ, there exist disjoint sets Z1, …, Zp ⊆ V(G) such that for every i ∊ {1, …, p} and every Z′ ⊆ Zi, the treewidth of G/(Zi\Z′) is upper bounded by O(p + |Z′|), where the constant hidden in O(·) depends on h. Here G/(Zi\Z′) denotes the graph obtained from G by contracting every edge with both endpoints in Zi\Z′. When Z′ = , this corresponds to classical Contraction Decomposition Theorem.

Abstract The Non-Uniform k -center (NUkC) problem has recently been formulated by Chakrabarty et al. [ICALP, 2016; ACM Trans Algorithms 16(4):46:1–46:19, 2020] as a generalization of the classical k -center clustering problem. In NUkC, given a set of n points P in a metric space and non-negative numbers $$r_1, r_2, \ldots , r_k$$ r 1 , r 2 , … , r k , the goal is to find the minimum dilation $$\alpha $$ α and to choose k balls centered at the points of P with radius $$\alpha \cdot r_i$$ α · r i for $$1\le i\le k$$ 1 ≤ i ≤ k , such that all points of P are contained in the union of the chosen balls. They showed that the problem is $$\mathsf {NP}$$ NP -hard to approximate within any factor even in tree metrics. On the other hand, they designed a “bi-criteria” constant approximation algorithm that uses a constant times k balls. Surprisingly, no true approximation is known even in the special case when the $$r_i$$ r i ’s belong to a fixed set of size 3. In this paper, we study the NUkC problem under perturbation resilience, which was introduced by Bilu and Linial (Comb Probab Comput 21(5):643–660, 2012). We show that the problem under 2-perturbation resilience is polynomial time solvable when the $$r_i$$ r i ’s belong to a constant-sized set. However, we show that perturbation resilience does not help in the general case. In particular, our findings imply that even with perturbation resilience one cannot hope to find any “good” approximation for the problem.

The clustering problem, in its many variants, has numerous applications in operations research and computer science (e.g., in applications in bioinformatics, image processing, social network analysis, etc.). As sizes of data sets have grown rapidly, researchers have focused on designing algorithms for clustering problems in models of computation suited for large-scale computation such as MapReduce, Pregel, and streaming models. The k-machine model (Klauck et al., SODA 2015) is a simple, message-passing model for large-scale distributed graph processing. This paper considers three of the most prominent examples of clustering problems: the uncapacitated facility location problem, the p-median problem, and the p-center problem and presents O (1)-factor approximation algorithms for these problems running in Õ (n/k) rounds in the k -machine model. These algorithms are optimal upto polylogarithmic factors because this paper also shows Ω (n/k) lower bounds for obtaining poly(n)-factor approximation algorithms for these problems. These are the first results for clustering problems in the k -machine model.

Fair clustering is a variant of constrained clustering where the goal is to partition a set of colored points. The fraction of points of each color in every cluster should be more or less equal to the fraction of points of this color in the dataset. This variant was recently introduced by Chierichetti et al. [NeurIPS 2017] and became widely popular. This paper proposes a new construction of coresets for fair k-means and k-median clustering for Euclidean and general metrics based on random sampling. For the Euclidean space ℝ^d, we provide the first coresets whose size does not depend exponentially on the dimension d. The question of whether such constructions exist was asked by Schmidt, Schwiegelshohn, and Sohler [WAOA 2019] and Huang, Jiang, and Vishnoi [NeurIPS 2019]. For general metric, our construction provides the first coreset for fair k-means and k-median. New coresets appear to be a handy tool for designing better approximation and streaming algorithms for fair and other constrained clustering variants. In particular, we obtain - the first fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) PTAS for fair k-means and k-median clustering in ℝ^d. The near-linear time of our PTAS improves over the previous scheme of Böhm, Fazzone, Leonardi, and Schwiegelshohn [ArXiv 2020] with running time n^{poly(k/ε)}; - FPT "true" constant-approximation for metric fair clustering. All previous algorithms for fair k-means and k-median in general metric are bicriteria and violate the fairness constraints; - FPT 3-approximation for lower-bounded k-median improving the best-known 3.736 factor of Bera, Chakrabarty, and Negahbani [ArXiv 2019]; - the first FPT constant-approximations for metric chromatic clustering and 𝓁-Diversity clustering; - near linear-time (in n) PTAS for capacitated and lower-bounded clustering improving over PTAS of Bhattacharya, Jaiswal, and Kumar [TOCS 2018] with super-quadratic running time; - a streaming (1+ε)-approximation for fair k-means and k-median of space complexity polynomial in k, d, ε and log{n} (the previous algorithms have exponential space complexity on either d or k).

Given two sets $S$ and $T$ of points in the plane, of total size $n$, a {many-to-many} matching between $S$ and $T$ is a set of pairs $(p,q)$ such that $p\in S$, $q\in T$ and for each $r\in S\cup T$, $r$ appears in at least one such pair. The {cost of a pair} $(p,q)$ is the (Euclidean) distance between $p$ and $q$. In the {minimum-cost many-to-many matching} problem, the goal is to compute a many-to-many matching such that the sum of the costs of the pairs is minimized. This problem is a restricted version of minimum-weight edge cover in a bipartite graph, and hence can be solved in $O(n^3)$ time. In a more restricted setting where all the points are on a line, the problem can be solved in $O(n\log n)$ time [Colannino, Damian, Hurtado, Langerman, Meijer, Ramaswami, Souvaine, Toussaint; Graphs Comb., 2007]. However, no progress has been made in the general planar case in improving the cubic time bound. In this paper, we obtain an $O(n^2\cdot poly(\log n))$ time exact algorithm and an $O( n^{3/2}\cdot poly(\log n))$ time $(1+ε)$-approximation in the planar case. Our results affirmatively address an open problem posed in [Colannino et al., Graphs Comb., 2007].

We develop new algorithmic methods with provable guarantees for feature selection in regard to categorical data clustering. While feature selection is one of the most common approaches to reduce dimensionality in practice, most of the known feature selection methods are heuristics. We study the following mathematical model. We assume that there are some inadvertent (or undesirable) features of the input data that unnecessarily increase the cost of clustering. Consequently, we want to select a subset of the original features from the data such that there is a small-cost clustering on the selected features. More precisely, for given integers l (the number of irrelevant features) and k (the number of clusters), budget B, and a set of n categorical data points (represented by m-dimensional vectors whose elements belong to a finite set of values Σ), we want to select m-l relevant features such that the cost of any optimal k-clustering on these features does not exceed B. Here the cost of a cluster is the sum of Hamming distances (l0-distances) between the selected features of the elements of the cluster and its center. The clustering cost is the total sum of the costs of the clusters. We use the framework of parameterized complexity to identify how the complexity of the problem depends on parameters k, B, and |Σ|. Our main result is an algorithm that solves the Feature Selection problem in time f(k,B,|Σ|)⋅m^{g(k,|Σ|)}⋅n² for some functions f and g. In other words, the problem is fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by B when |Σ| and k are constants. Our algorithm for Feature Selection is based on a solution to a more general problem, Constrained Clustering with Outliers. In this problem, we want to delete a certain number of outliers such that the remaining points could be clustered around centers satisfying specific constraints. One interesting fact about Constrained Clustering with Outliers is that besides Feature Selection, it encompasses many other fundamental problems regarding categorical data such as Robust Clustering, Binary and Boolean Low-rank Matrix Approximation with Outliers, and Binary Robust Projective Clustering. Thus as a byproduct of our theorem, we obtain algorithms for all these problems. We also complement our algorithmic findings with complexity lower bounds.

In the Metric Capacitated Covering (MCC) problem, given a set of balls ℬ in a metric space P with metric d and a capacity parameter U, the goal is to find a minimum sized subset ℬ' ⊆ ℬ and an assignment of the points in P to the balls in ℬ' such that each point is assigned to a ball that contains it and each ball is assigned with at most U points. MCC achieves an O(log |P|)-approximation using a greedy algorithm. On the other hand, it is hard to approximate within a factor of o(log |P|) even with β < 3 factor expansion of the balls. Bandyapadhyay et al. [SoCG 2018, DCG 2019] showed that one can obtain an O(1)-approximation for the problem with 6.47 factor expansion of the balls. An open question left by their work is to reduce the gap between the lower bound 3 and the upper bound 6.47. In this current work, we show that it is possible to obtain an O(1)-approximation with only 4.24 factor expansion of the balls. We also show a similar upper bound of 5 for a more generalized version of MCC for which the best previously known bound was 9.

In this paper, we consider the colorful k-center problem, which is a generalization of the well-known k-center problem. Here, we are given red and blue points in a metric space, and a coverage requirement for each color. The goal is to find the smallest radius rho, such that with k balls of radius rho, the desired number of points of each color can be covered. We obtain a constant approximation for this problem in the Euclidean plane. We obtain this result by combining a "pseudo-approximation" algorithm that works in any metric space, and an approximation algorithm that works for a special class of instances in the plane. The latter algorithm uses a novel connection to a certain matching problem in graphs.

Given a set of obstacles and two points, is there a path between the two points that does not cross more than $k$ different obstacles? This is a fundamental problem that has undergone a tremendous amount of work. It is known to be NP-hard, even when the obstacles are very simple geometric shapes (e.g., unit-length line segments). The problem can be generalized into the following graph problem: Given a planar graph $G$ whose vertices are colored by color sets, two designated vertices $s, t \in V(G)$, and $k \in \mathbb{N}$, is there an $s$-$t$ path in $G$ that uses at most $k$ colors? If each obstacle is connected, the resulting graph satisfies the color-connectivity property, namely that each color induces a connected subgraph. We study the complexity and design algorithms for the above graph problem with an eye on its geometric applications. We prove that without the color-connectivity property, the problem is W[SAT]-hard parameterized by $k$. A corollary of this result is that, unless W[2] $=$ FPT, the problem cannot be approximated in FPT time to within a factor that is a function of $k$. By describing a generic plane embedding of the graph instances, we show that our hardness results translate to the geometric instances of the problem. We then focus on graphs satisfying the color-connectivity property. By exploiting the planarity of the graph and the connectivity of the colors, we develop topological results to "represent" the valid $s$-$t$ paths containing subsets of colors from any vertex $v$. We employ these results to design an FPT algorithm for the problem parameterized by both $k$ and the treewidth of the graph, and extend this result to obtain an FPT algorithm for the parameterization by both $k$ and the length of the path. The latter result directly implies previous FPT results for various obstacle shapes, such as unit disks and fat regions.

In this article, we consider the following capacitated covering problem. We are given a set P of n points and a set B of balls from some metric space, and a positive integer U that represents the capacity of each of the balls in B. We would like to compute a subset B' subseteq B of balls and assign each point in P to some ball in B' that contains it, such that the number of points assigned to any ball is at most U. The objective function that we would like to minimize is the cardinality of B'. We consider this problem in arbitrary metric spaces as well as Euclidean spaces of constant dimension. In the metric setting, even the uncapacitated version of the problem is hard to approximate to within a logarithmic factor. In the Euclidean setting, the best known approximation guarantee in dimensions 3 and higher is logarithmic in the number of points. Thus we focus on obtaining "bi-criteria" approximations. In particular, we are allowed to expand the balls in our solution by some factor, but optimal solutions do not have that flexibility. Our main result is that allowing constant factor expansion of the input balls suffices to obtain constant approximations for this problem. In fact, in the Euclidean setting, only (1+epsilon) factor expansion is sufficient for any epsilon > 0, with the approximation factor being a polynomial in 1/epsilon. We obtain these results using a unified scheme for rounding the natural LP relaxation; this scheme may be useful for other capacitated covering problems. We also complement these bi-criteria approximations by obtaining hardness of approximation results that shed light on our understanding of these problems.

We consider the Minimum Dominating Set (MDS) problem on the intersection graphs of geometric objects. Even for simple and widely-used geometric objects such as rectangles, no sub-logarithmic approximation is known for the problem and (perhaps surprisingly) the problem is NP-hard even when all the rectangles are "anchored" at a diagonal line with slope -1 (Pandit, CCCG 2017). In this paper, we first show that for any $ε>0$, there exists a $(2+ε)$-approximation algorithm for the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" rectangles, providing the first $O(1)$-approximation for the problem on a non-trivial subclass of rectangles. It is not hard to see that the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" rectangles is the same as the MDS problem on "diagonal-anchored" L-frames: the union of a vertical and a horizontal line segment that share an endpoint. As such, we also obtain a $(2+ε)$-approximation for the problem with "diagonal-anchored" L-frames. On the other hand, we show that the problem is APX-hard in case the input L-frames intersect the diagonal, or the horizontal segments of the L-frames intersect a vertical line. However, as we show, the problem is linear-time solvable in case the L-frames intersect a vertical as well as a horizontal line. Finally, we consider the MDS problem in the so-called "edge intersection model" and obtain a number of results, answering two questions posed by Mehrabi (WAOA 2017).

Clustering problems often arise in fields like data mining and machine learning. Clustering usually refers to the task of partitioning a collection of objects into groups with similar elements, with respect to a similarity (or dissimilarity) measure. Among the clustering problems, k-means clustering in particular has received much attention from researchers. Despite the fact that k-means is a well studied problem, its status in the plane is still open. In particular, it is unknown whether it admits a PTAS in the plane. The best known approximation bound achievable in polynomial time is 9+epsilon. In this paper, we consider the following variant of k-means. Given a set C of points in R^d and a real f > 0, find a finite set F of points in R^d that minimizes the quantity f*|F|+sum_{p in C} min_{q in F} {||p-q||}^2. For any fixed dimension d, we design a PTAS for this problem that is based on local search. We also give a "bi-criterion" local search algorithm for k-means which uses (1+epsilon)k centers and yields a solution whose cost is at most (1+epsilon) times the cost of an optimal k-means solution. The algorithm runs in polynomial time for any fixed dimension. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, we are able to handle the square of distances in an elegant manner, obtaining a near-optimal approximation bound. This leads us towards a better understanding of the k-means problem. On the other hand, our analysis of local search might also be useful for other geometric problems. This is important considering that little is known about the local search method for geometric approximation.

In this paper we consider two metric covering/clustering problems - Minimum Cost Covering Problem (MCC) and k-clustering. In the MCC problem, we are given two point sets X (clients) and Y (servers), and a metric on X cup Y. We would like to cover the clients by balls centered at the servers. The objective function to minimize is the sum of the alpha-th power of the radii of the balls. Here alpha geq 1 is a parameter of the problem (but not of a problem instance). MCC is closely related to the k-clustering problem. The main difference between k-clustering and MCC is that in k-clustering one needs to select k balls to cover the clients. For any eps > 0, we describe quasi-polynomial time (1 + eps) approximation algorithms for both of the problems. However, in case of k-clustering the algorithm uses (1 + eps)k balls. Prior to our work, a 3^alpha and a c^alpha approximation were achieved by polynomial-time algorithms for MCC and k-clustering, respectively, where c > 1 is an absolute constant. These two problems are thus interesting examples of metric covering/clustering problems that admit (1 + eps)-approximation (using (1 + eps)k balls in case of k-clustering), if one is willing to settle for quasi-polynomial time. In contrast, for the variant of MCC where alpha is part of the input, we show under standard assumptions that no polynomial time algorithm can achieve an approximation factor better than O(log |X|) for alpha geq log |X|.

Recently, Adamaszek and Wiese [1, 2] presented a quasi-polynomial time approximation scheme (QPTAS) for the problem of computing a maximum weight independent set for certain families of planar objects. This major advance on the problem was based on their proof that a certain type of separator exists for any independent set. Subsequently, Har-Peled [22] simplified and generalized their result. Mustafa et al. [36] also described a simplification, and somewhat surprisingly, showed that QPTAS's can be obtained for certain, albeit special, type of covering problems. Building on these developments, we revisit two NP-hard geometric partitioning problems – convex decomposition and surface approximation. Partitioning problems combine the features of packing and covering. In particular, since the optimal solution does form a packing, the separator theorems are potentially applicable. Nevertheless, the two partitioning problems we study bring up additional difficulties that are worth examining in the context of the wider applicability of the separator methodology. We show how these issues can be handled in presenting quasi-polynomial time algorithms for these two problems with improved approximation guarantees.