A computational study of a geometric embedding of minimum multiway cut

In the minimum multiway cut problem, the goal is to find a minimum cost set of edges whose removal disconnects a certain set of k distinguished vertices in a graph. The problem is MAX-SNP hard for k >/= 3. Clinescu, Karloff, and Rabani gave a geometric relaxation of the problem and a rounding scheme, to produce an approximation algorithm that has a performance guarantee of 3/2 - 1/k. In a subsequent study, Karger, Klein, Stein, Thorup, and Young discovered improved rounding schemes via computation experiments for various values of k, yielding approximation algorithms with improved performance guarantees. Their rounding scheme for k = 3 is provably optimal (i.e., its performance guarantee is equal to the integrality gap of the relaxation), but their rounding schemes for k > 3 seemed unlikely to be optimal. In the present work, we improve these rounding schemes for small values of k > 3, yielding improved approximation algorithms. These improvements were discovered by applying an improved analysis to the same set of computational experiments used by Karger et al.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Shin, David (David Donghun)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David R. Karger.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37070

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37070