601.435/635 Approximation Algorithms - Spring 2019

Instructor: Michael Dinitz
Lecture: T Th 3pm - 4:15 pm, Ames 234
Office Hours: Tuesdays 1:30pm - 2:45pm and by appointment, Malone 217
Teaching Assistant: Yasamin Nazari. Office Hours: Wednesdays 10:45am - 11:45am, Malone 216

Resources:

Date Topic Reference Notes
 Jan 29   Intro, Vertex Cover   Chapter 1.1    
 Jan 31   Steiner Tree, TSP   Chapter 2.4, Exercise 2.5    
 Feb 5   Greedy: Set Cover   Chapter 1.6    
 Feb 7   Greedy: Max Coverage, k-Center   Chapter 2.2, Exercise 2.11    
 Feb 12   Local Search: Max Cut and Weighted Max Cut      HW1 released 
 Feb 14   Local Search: Min Degree Spanning Tree   Chapters 2.6, 9.3    
 Feb 19   Rounding and Dynamic Programming: Knapsack   Chapter 3.1    
 Feb 21   Rounding and Dynamic Programming: Min Makespan Scheduling, Bin Packing   Chapters 3.2, 3.3   HW1 due, HW2 released 
 Feb 26   Intro to LPs for Approximation Algorithms   Chapters 1.2, 1.3, 4.3, Appendix A    
 Feb 28   Deterministic Rounding: Metric Uncapacitated Facility Location   Chapter 4.5    
 Mar 5   Randomized Rounding: Set Cover and UFL   Chapters 1.7, 5.8    
 Mar 7   Randomized Rounding: Integer Multicommodity Flow   Chapters 5.10, 5.11   HW2 due, HW3 released 
 Mar 12   Randomized Rounding: Group Steiner Tree   Notes from CMU, GKR paper    
 Mar 14   Tree Embeddings and Group Steiner Tree   Chapter 8.5    
 Mar 26   Tree Embeddings: FRT   Chapter 8.5    
 Mar 28   LPs as Metrics: s-t Mincut and Multiway Cut   Chapters 8.1, 8.2   HW3 due, HW4 released 
 Apr 2   LPs as metrics: Multiway Cut and Multicut   Chapter 8.2    
 Apr 4   LPs as Metrics: Multicut   Chapter 8.3    
 Apr 9   LP duality and flow/cut gaps   Chapter 1.4, Appendix A    
 Apr 11   Dual Fitting and Primal-Dual Algorithms   Chapters 1.5, 1.6, 7.1, 7.3   HW4 due, HW5 released 
 Apr 16   Primal-Dual: Steiner Forest   Chapter 7.4    
 Apr 18   Semidefinite Programming: Max-Cut   Chapters 6.1, 6.2    
 Apr 23   Semidefinite Programming: Correlation Clustering and Max-2SAT   Chapter 6.4    
 Apr 25   Strengthening Relaxations: Knapsack-Cover Inequalities   Chapter 7.5   HW5 due 
 Apr 30   Hardness of Approximation and the PCP Theorem   Chapters 16.1, 16.2, 16.3    
 May 3   Hardness of Approximation: Two-Prover Proof Systems and Label Cover   Chapter 16.4    


Assignments

Please submit homeworks using Gradescope (entry code 9BK3PJ).

Additional Resources

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