We establish significantly improved bounds on the performance of the greedy
algorithm for approximating MINIMUM SET COVER and MINIMUM PARTIAL COVER. Our
improvements result from a new approach to both problems. In particular,
(a) we improve the known bound on the performance ratio of the greedy
more >>>

In this paper we study the approximability of boolean constraint
satisfaction problems. A problem in this class consists of some
collection of ``constraints'' (i.e., functions
$f:\{0,1\}^k \rightarrow \{0,1\}$); an instance of a problem is a set
of constraints applied to specified subsets of $n$ boolean
variables. Schaefer earlier studied ... more >>>

This paper continues the work initiated by Creignou [Cre95] and
Khanna, Sudan and Williamson [KSW96] who classify maximization
problems derived from boolean constraint satisfaction. Here we
study the approximability of {\em minimization} problems derived
thence. A problem in this framework is characterized by a
collection F of ... more >>>

Given a finite set $S$ of points (i.e. the stations of a radio
network) on a $d$-dimensional Euclidean space and a positive integer
$1\le h \le |S|-1$, the \minrangeh{d} problem
consists of assigning transmission ranges to the stations so as
to minimize the total power consumption, provided ... more >>>

A cycle cover of a graph is a set of cycles such that every vertex is
part of exactly one cycle. An L-cycle cover is a cycle cover in which
the length of every cycle is in the set L. The weight of a cycle cover
of an edge-weighted graph ... more >>>

The main aim of randomized search heuristics is to produce good approximations of optimal solutions within a small amount of time. In contrast to numerous experimental results, there are only a few theoretical results on this subject.
We consider the approximation ability of randomized search for the class of ... more >>>