Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2512.17116

Optimal Verification of a Minimum-Weight Basis in an Uncertainty Matroid

Haya Diwan·Lisa Hellerstein·Nicole Megow·Jens Schlöter
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Research in explorable uncertainty addresses combinatorial optimization problems where there is partial information about the values of numeric input parameters, and exact values of these parameters can be determined by performing costly queries. The goal is to design an adaptive query strategy that minimizes the query cost incurred in computing an optimal solution. Solving such problems generally requires that we be able to solve the associated verification problem: given the answers to all queries in advance, find a minimum-cost set of queries that certifies an optimal solution to the combinatorial optimization problem. We present a polynomial-time algorithm for verifying a minimum-weight basis of a matroid, where each weight lies in a given uncertainty area. These areas may be finite sets, real intervals, or unions of open and closed intervals, strictly generalizing previous work by Erlebach and Hoffman which only handled the special case of open intervals. Our algorithm introduces new techniques to address the resulting challenges. Verification problems are of particular importance in the area of explorable uncertainty, as the structural insights and techniques used to solve the verification problem often heavily influence work on the corresponding online problem and its stochastic variant. In our case, we use structural results from the verification problem to give a best-possible algorithm for a promise variant of the corresponding adaptive online problem. Finally, we show that our algorithms can be applied to two learning-augmented variants of the minimum-weight basis problem under explorable uncertainty.

Explore related subjects

cs.DS

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Haya Diwan, Lisa Hellerstein, Nicole Megow, Jens Schlöter. 2026-04-08. Optimal Verification of a Minimum-Weight Basis in an Uncertainty Matroid. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17116

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Beyond Kruskal: Polynomial-Time Tensor Decomposition under the Lovitz-Petrov Condition

Identifiability criteria certify that a given tensor decomposition is a unique rank decomposition. Kruskal's classical condition is one of the best-known deterministic criteria for identifiability. However, no polynomial-time decomposition algorithm is known under the Kruskal condition, and verifying the condition itself is NP-hard. Lovitz and Petrov introduced a strictly more general identifiability condition which, in contrast, is polynomial-time verifiable, but no polynomial-time decomposition algorithm was previously known under this condition. We give a polynomial-time algorithm for tensor decomposition under the Lovitz--Petrov condition. Moreover, combining our algorithm with polynomial-time verification of the Lovitz--Petrov condition yields an efficient end-to-end certification procedure: after computing a decomposition, one can deterministically certify in polynomial time that it is unique and therefore of minimum rank. This contrasts with an arbitrary tensor decomposition, which certifies only an upper bound on the tensor rank, while determining tensor rank is NP-hard in general.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2026

Poisson Exchange Beyond Submodularity: Effective Approximation Algorithms for Offline and Online Subset Selection over Matroids

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has shown that $γ$-weak submodularity broadly arises in numerous subset selection tasks, including feature selection, neural network pruning, and video summarization. Despite its prevalence, maximizing a $γ$-weakly submodular function subject to a general matroid constraint remains challenging. To date, the only known approximation guarantee is the conservative $(1+1/γ)^{-2}$ factor established by \citet{chen2018weakly}. To improve upon this result, this paper proposes a novel algorithm called \MGPE, which repeatedly performs maximum-gain local exchanges through careful control of a non-homogeneous Poisson clock, and proves that this \MGPE\ can attain an approximation ratio arbitrarily close to $ρ_γ=1-\left(γ/(2-γ)\right)^{ \frac{γ^2}{2(1-γ)} }$. In sharp contrast to the previous guarantee, our obtained factor $ρ_γ$ not only strictly improves upon $(1+1/γ)^{-2}$ for every $γ\in(0,1]$, but also can asymptotically approach the optimal $(1-1/e)$-approximation for submodular maximization as $γ\to1$. Furthermore, we surprisingly find that when the matroid constraint reduces to a cardinality or the objective satisfies the stronger notion of $α$-weak DR-submodularity, \MGPE\ can automatically recover the tight approximation ratios of $1-e^{-γ}$ and $1-e^{-α}$, respectively. Here, $α\in(0,1]$ denotes the DR ratio.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2026

Approximating Prize-Collecting TSP below 1.556

The prize-collecting traveling salesperson problem is a variant of the metric traveling salesperson problem in which vertices may be left unvisited by paying their associated penalties. The objective is to minimize the length of the tour plus the total penalty of the unvisited vertices. Blauth, Klein, and Nägele gave the previously best-known LP-relative $1.599$-approximation. We show that a simpler version of their algorithm, obtained by omitting the splitting-off preprocessing before the tree decomposition, has an LP-relative approximation ratio of $1.555761$. The improvement comes entirely from a new analysis of the parity-correction step: a simple analysis already gives $1.56$, and the stated factor follows from a numerical parameter search with exact verification.

cs.DS↗