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Taihei Oki

Publications and source records attributed to Taihei Oki.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Ascending Auctions for Combinatorial Markets with Frictions: A Unified Framework via Discrete Convex Analysis

We develop a unified ascending-auction framework for computing Walrasian equilibria in combinatorial markets with strong substitutes valuations and piecewise-linear payment functions. Our auction extends the celebrated ascending auctions of Gul and Stacchetti (2000) and Ausubel (2006) to accommodate payment frictions (e.g., transaction taxes or commission fees). This is achieved by incorporating directional price updates that reflect heterogeneous payment structures. Our framework also generalizes the unit-demand imperfectly transferable utility models of Alkan (1989, 1992) to a fully combinatorial setting, thereby unifying these paradigms. Furthermore, this is the first study to compute the minimum -- also known as the buyer-optimal -- equilibrium in combinatorial markets with such frictions. Our analysis builds upon discrete convex analysis. Our main technical contribution is a characterization of valid price-update directions, together with a strongly polynomial-time algorithm for computing them. Notably, the algorithm uses only demand- and exchange-oracle queries and never requires handling information of exponential size. To compute such a direction, we formulate a lexicographic extension of the polymatroid sum problem and characterize its dual solution via a reduction to a convex flow problem. Exploiting the $\text{L}^\natural$-convexity of the dual objective, we show that the desired direction can be constructed from the minimal dual solution. This convexity also yields transparent economic and potential-based interpretations of the auction dynamics, strengthening the connection between ascending auctions and discrete optimization.

cs.GT

Finite and Corruption-Robust Regret Bounds in Online Inverse Linear Optimization under M-Convex Action Sets

We study online inverse linear optimization, also known as contextual recommendation, where a learner sequentially infers an agent's hidden objective vector from observed optimal actions over feasible sets that change over time. The learner aims to recommend actions that perform well under the agent's true objective, and the performance is measured by the regret, defined as the cumulative gap between the agent's optimal values and those achieved by the learner's recommended actions. Prior work has established a regret bound of $O(d\log T)$, as well as a finite but exponentially large bound of $\exp(O(d\log d))$, where $d$ is the dimension of the optimization problem and $T$ is the time horizon, while a regret lower bound of $\Omega(d)$ is known (Gollapudi et al. 2021; Sakaue et al. 2025). Whether a finite regret bound polynomial in $d$ is achievable or not has remained an open question. We partially resolve this by showing that when the feasible sets are M-convex -- a broad class that includes matroids -- a finite regret bound of $O(d\log d)$ is possible. We achieve this by combining a structural characterization of optimal solutions on M-convex sets with a geometric volume argument. Moreover, we extend our approach to adversarially corrupted feedback in up to $C$ rounds. We obtain a regret bound of $O((C+1)d\log d)$ without prior knowledge of $C$, by monitoring directed graphs induced by the observed feedback to detect corruptions adaptively.

cs.LG

Generalizing the Multiple Exchange Property for Matroid Bases

The multiple exchange property for matroid bases states that for any bases $A$ and $B$ of a matroid and any subset $X\subseteq A\setminus B$, there exists a subset $Y\subseteq B\setminus A$ such that both $A-X+Y$ and $B+X-Y$ are bases. This classical result has found applications not only in matroid theory, but also in the analysis and design of various algorithms. This paper generalizes the multiple exchange property in two directions. First, we prove a common generalization of this and other known basis exchange properties by showing that for any subsets $X \subseteq A \setminus B$ and $Y \subseteq B \setminus A$, there exist subsets $U \subseteq A \setminus B$ and $V \subseteq B \setminus A$ such that $X\subseteq U$, $Y\subseteq V$, $A-U+V$ and $B+U-V$ are bases, and $|U|=|V|$ is at most the rank of $X+Y$. Second, we develop a general framework for deriving extensions of the Grassmann-Pl\"ucker identity. For matroids representable over fields of characteristic zero, this framework yields new exchange and reconfiguration properties, the latter requiring the resulting basis pair to be reachable from the original one by a sequence of symmetric exchanges. For this matroid class, we obtain an exchange theorem that simultaneously generalizes our first result and the recent Equitability Theorem (SODA 2026). Within the same representable setting, we also derive a weighted equitability theorem, with an application to matroid-constrained EF1 allocations for two agents with additive valuations.

math.CO

Steepest Descent Algorithm for M-convex Function Minimization Using Long Step Length

We consider the minimization of an M-convex function, which is a discrete convexity concept for functions on the integer lattice points. It is known that a minimizer of an Mconvex function can be obtained by the steepest descent algorithm. In this paper, we propose an effective use of long step length in the steepest descent algorithm, aiming at the reduction in the running time. In particular, we obtain an improved time bound by using long step length. We also consider the constrained M-convex function minimization and show that long step length can be applied to a variant of steepest descent algorithm as well.

math.OC

Online Inverse Linear Optimization: Efficient Logarithmic-Regret Algorithm, Robustness to Suboptimality, and Lower Bound

In online inverse linear optimization, a learner observes time-varying sets of feasible actions and an agent's optimal actions, selected by solving linear optimization over the feasible actions. The learner sequentially makes predictions of the agent's true linear objective function, and their quality is measured by the regret, the cumulative gap between optimal objective values and those achieved by following the learner's predictions. A seminal work by B\"armann et al. (2017) obtained a regret bound of $O(\sqrt{T})$, where $T$ is the time horizon. Subsequently, the regret bound has been improved to $O(n^4 \ln T)$ by Besbes et al. (2021, 2025) and to $O(n \ln T)$ by Gollapudi et al. (2021), where $n$ is the dimension of the ambient space of objective vectors. However, these logarithmic-regret methods are highly inefficient when $T$ is large, as they need to maintain regions specified by $O(T)$ constraints, which represent possible locations of the true objective vector. In this paper, we present the first logarithmic-regret method whose per-round complexity is independent of $T$; indeed, it achieves the best-known bound of $O(n \ln T)$. Our method is strikingly simple: it applies the online Newton step (ONS) to appropriate exp-concave loss functions. Moreover, for the case where the agent's actions are possibly suboptimal, we establish a regret bound of $O(n\ln T + \sqrt{\Delta_T n\ln T})$, where $\Delta_T$ is the cumulative suboptimality of the agent's actions. This bound is achieved by using MetaGrad, which runs ONS with $\Theta(\ln T)$ different learning rates in parallel. We also present a lower bound of $\Omega(n)$, showing that the $O(n\ln T)$ bound is tight up to an $O(\ln T)$ factor.

cs.LG

Towards the Proximity Conjecture on Group-Labeled Matroids

Consider a matroid $M$ whose ground set is equipped with a labeling to an abelian group. A basis of $M$ is called $F$-avoiding if the sum of the labels of its elements is not in a forbidden label set $F$. H\"orsch, Imolay, Mizutani, Oki, and Schwarcz (2024) conjectured that if an $F$-avoiding basis exists, then any basis can be transformed into an $F$-avoiding basis by exchanging at most $|F|$ elements. This proximity conjecture is known to hold for certain specific groups; in the case where $|F| \le 2$; or when the matroid is subsequence-interchangeably base orderable (SIBO), which is a weakening of the so-called strongly base orderable (SBO) property. In this paper, we settle the proximity conjecture for sparse paving matroids or in the case where $|F| \le 4$. Related to the latter result, we present the first known example of a non-SIBO matroid. We further address the setting of multiple group-label constraints, showing proximity results for the cases of two labelings, SIBO matroids, matroids representable over a fixed, finite field, and sparse paving matroids.

math.CO

Fast and Numerically Stable Implementation of Rate Constant Matrix Contraction Method

The rate constant matrix contraction (RCMC) method, proposed by Sumiya et al. (2015, 2017), enables fast and numerically stable simulations of chemical kinetics on large-scale reaction path networks. Later, Iwata et al. (2023) mathematically reformulated the RCMC method as a numerical algorithm to solve master equations whose coefficient matrices, known as rate constant matrices, possess the detailed balance property. This paper aims to accelerate the RCMC method. The bottleneck in the RCMC method lies in the greedy selection of steady states, which is actually equivalent to the greedy algorithm for the MAP inference in DPPs under cardinality constraints. Hemmi et al. (2022) introduced a fast implementation of the greedy DPP MAP inference, called LazyFastGreedy, by combining the greedy algorithm of Chen et al. (2018) with the lazy greedy algorithm by Minoux (1978), a practically efficient greedy algorithm that exploits the submodularity of the objective function. However, for instances arising from chemical kinetics, the straightforward application of LazyFastGreedy suffers from catastrophic cancellations due to the wide range of reaction time scales. To address this numerical instability, we propose a modification to LazyFastGreedy that avoids the subtraction of like-sign numbers by leveraging the properties of rate constant matrices and the connection of the DPP MAP inference to Cholesky decomposition. For faster implementation, we utilize a segment tree, a data structure that manages one-dimensional arrays of elements in a semigroup. We also analyze the increase in relative errors caused by like-sign subtractions and permit such subtractions when they do not lead to catastrophic cancellations, aiming to further accelerate the process. Using real instances, we confirm that the proposed algorithm is both numerically stable and significantly faster than the original RCMC method.

math.NA

Position Fair Mechanisms Allocating Indivisible Goods

Fair division mechanisms for indivisible goods require agent orderings to deterministically select one allocation when running the algorithm in practice. We introduce position envy-freeness up to one good (PEF1) as a fairness criterion for mechanisms: a mechanism is said to satisfy PEF1 if for any pair of agent orderings, no agent prefers their bundle determined under one ordering to that under another ordering by more than the utility of a single good. First, we propose a scale-invariant, polynomial-time mechanism that satisfies PEF1 and yields an envy-freeness up to one good (EF1) allocation. For the case of two agents, we establish that any mechanism producing a maximum Nash welfare allocation eliminates envy based on positions by removing one good, provided that utilities are positive. Additionally, we present a polynomial-time mechanism based on the adjusted winner procedure, which satisfies PEF1 and produces an EF1 and Pareto optimal allocation for two agents. In contrast, we demonstrate that well-known mechanisms such as round-robin and envy-cycle elimination do not generally satisfy PEF1.

cs.GT

Algorithmic aspects of semistability of quiver representations

We study the semistability of quiver representations from an algorithmic perspective. We present efficient algorithms for several fundamental computational problems on the semistability of quiver representations: deciding the semistability and $\sigma$-semistability, finding the maximizers of King's criterion, and computing the Harder--Narasimhan filtration. We also investigate a class of polyhedral cones defined by the linear system in King's criterion, which we refer to as King cones. For rank-one representations, we demonstrate that these King cones can be encoded by submodular flow polytopes, enabling us to decide the $\sigma$-semistability in strongly polynomial time. Our approach employs submodularity in quiver representations, which may be of independent interest.

math.OC

Matroid Intersection under Minimum Rank Oracle

In this paper, we consider the tractability of the matroid intersection problem under the minimum rank oracle. In this model, we are given an oracle that takes as its input a set of elements and returns as its output the minimum of the ranks of the given set in the two matroids. For the unweighted matroid intersection problem, we show how to construct a necessary part of the exchangeability graph, which enables us to emulate the standard augmenting path algorithm. For the weighted problem, the tractability is open in general. Nevertheless, we describe several special cases where tractability can be achieved, and we discuss potential approaches and the challenges encountered. On the positive side, we present a solution for the case where no circuit of one matroid is contained within a circuit of the other. Additionally, we propose a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm, parameterized by the maximum size of a circuit of one matroid. We also show that a lexicographically maximal common independent set can be found by the same approach, which leads to a nontrivial approximation ratio for finding a maximum-weight common independent set. On the negative side, we prove that the approach employed for the tractable cases above involves an NP-hard problem in the general case. We also show that if we consider the generalization to polymatroid intersection, even the unweighted problem is hard under the minimum rank oracle.

cs.DS

No-Regret M${}^{\natural}$-Concave Function Maximization: Stochastic Bandit Algorithms and Hardness of Adversarial Full-Information Setting

M${}^{\natural}$-concave functions, a.k.a. gross substitute valuation functions, play a fundamental role in many fields, including discrete mathematics and economics. In practice, perfect knowledge of M${}^{\natural}$-concave functions is often unavailable a priori, and we can optimize them only interactively based on some feedback. Motivated by such situations, we study online M${}^{\natural}$-concave function maximization problems, which are interactive versions of the problem studied by Murota and Shioura (1999). For the stochastic bandit setting, we present $O(T^{-1/2})$-simple regret and $O(T^{2/3})$-regret algorithms under $T$ times access to unbiased noisy value oracles of M${}^{\natural}$-concave functions. A key to proving these results is the robustness of the greedy algorithm to local errors in M${}^{\natural}$-concave function maximization, which is one of our main technical results. While we obtain those positive results for the stochastic setting, another main result of our work is an impossibility in the adversarial setting. We prove that, even with full-information feedback, no algorithms that run in polynomial time per round can achieve $O(T^{1-c})$ regret for any constant $c > 0$. Our proof is based on a reduction from the matroid intersection problem for three matroids, which would be a novel approach to establishing the hardness in online learning.

cs.LG

Structural Preprocessing Method for Nonlinear Differential-Algebraic Equations Using Linear Symbolic Matrices

Differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) have been used in modeling various dynamical systems in science and engineering. Several preprocessing methods for DAEs, such as consistent initialization and index reduction, use structural information on DAEs. Unfortunately, these methods may fail when the system Jacobian, which is a functional matrix, derived from the DAE is singular. To transform a DAE with a singular system Jacobian into a nonsingular system, several regularization methods have been proposed. Most of all existing regularization methods rely on symbolic computation to eliminate the system Jacobian for finding a certificate of singularity, resulting in much computational time. Iwata--Oki--Takamatsu (2019) proposed a method (IOT-method) to find a certificate without symbolic computations. The IOT method approximates the system Jacobian by a simpler symbolic matrix, called a layered mixed matrix, which admits a fast combinatorial algorithm for singularity testing. However, it often overlooks the singularity of the system Jacobian since the approximation largely discards algebraic relationships among entries in the original system Jacobian. In this study, we propose a new regularization method extending the idea of the IOT method. Instead of layered mixed matrices, our method approximates the system Jacobian by more expressive symbolic matrices, called rank-1 coefficient mixed (1CM) matrices. This makes our method more widely applicable. We give a fast combinatorial algorithm for finding a singularity certificate of 1CM-matrices, which is free from symbolic elimination. Our method is also advantageous in that it globally preserves the solution set to the DAE. Through numerical experiments, we confirmed that our method runs fast for large-scale DAEs from real instances.

cs.SC

Fractional Linear Matroid Matching is in quasi-NC

The matching and linear matroid intersection problems are solvable in quasi-NC, meaning that there exist deterministic algorithms that run in polylogarithmic time and use quasi-polynomially many parallel processors. However, such a parallel algorithm is unknown for linear matroid matching, which generalizes both of these problems. In this work, we propose a quasi-NC algorithm for fractional linear matroid matching, which is a relaxation of linear matroid matching and commonly generalizes fractional matching and linear matroid intersection. Our algorithm builds upon the connection of fractional matroid matching to non-commutative Edmonds' problem recently revealed by Oki and Soma~(2023). As a corollary, we also solve black-box non-commutative Edmonds' problem with rank-two skew-symmetric coefficients.

cs.CC

Problems on Group-labeled Matroid Bases

Consider a matroid equipped with a labeling of its ground set to an abelian group. We define the label of a subset of the ground set as the sum of the labels of its elements. We study a collection of problems on finding bases and common bases of matroids with restrictions on their labels. For zero bases and zero common bases, the results are mostly negative. While finding a non-zero basis of a matroid is not difficult, it turns out that the complexity of finding a non-zero common basis depends on the group. Namely, we show that the problem is hard for a fixed group if it contains an element of order two, otherwise it is polynomially solvable. As a generalization of both zero and non-zero constraints, we further study $F$-avoiding constraints where we seek a basis or common basis whose label is not in a given set $F$ of forbidden labels. Using algebraic techniques, we give a randomized algorithm for finding an $F$-avoiding common basis of two matroids represented over the same field for finite groups given as operation tables. The study of $F$-avoiding bases with groups given as oracles leads to a conjecture stating that whenever an $F$-avoiding basis exists, an $F$-avoiding basis can be obtained from an arbitrary basis by exchanging at most $|F|$ elements. We prove the conjecture for the special cases when $|F|\le 2$ or the group is ordered. By relying on structural observations on matroids representable over fixed, finite fields, we verify a relaxed version of the conjecture for these matroids. As a consequence, we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm in these special cases for finding an $F$-avoiding basis when $|F|$ is fixed.

cs.DM

Online Structured Prediction with Fenchel--Young Losses and Improved Surrogate Regret for Online Multiclass Classification with Logistic Loss

This paper studies online structured prediction with full-information feedback. For online multiclass classification, Van der Hoeven (2020) established \emph{finite} surrogate regret bounds, which are independent of the time horizon, by introducing an elegant \emph{exploit-the-surrogate-gap} framework. However, this framework has been limited to multiclass classification primarily because it relies on a classification-specific procedure for converting estimated scores to outputs. We extend the exploit-the-surrogate-gap framework to online structured prediction with \emph{Fenchel--Young losses}, a large family of surrogate losses that includes the logistic loss for multiclass classification as a special case, obtaining finite surrogate regret bounds in various structured prediction problems. To this end, we propose and analyze \emph{randomized decoding}, which converts estimated scores to general structured outputs. Moreover, by applying our decoding to online multiclass classification with the logistic loss, we obtain a surrogate regret bound of $O(\| \mathbf{U} \|_\mathrm{F}^2)$, where $\mathbf{U}$ is the best offline linear estimator and $\| \cdot \|_\mathrm{F}$ denotes the Frobenius norm. This bound is tight up to logarithmic factors and improves the previous bound of $O(d\| \mathbf{U} \|_\mathrm{F}^2)$ due to Van der Hoeven (2020) by a factor of $d$, the number of classes.

cs.LG

Rate Constant Matrix Contraction Method for Stiff Master Equations with Detailed Balance

This paper considers master equations for Markovian kinetic schemes that possess the detailed balance property. Chemical kinetics, as a prime example, often yields large-scale, highly stiff equations. Based on chemical intuitions, Sumiya et al. (2015) presented the rate constant matrix contraction (RCMC) method that computes approximate solutions to such intractable systems. This paper aims to establish a mathematical foundation for the RCMC method. We present a reformulated RCMC method in terms of matrix computation, deriving the method from several natural requirements. We then perform a theoretical error analysis based on eigendecomposition and discuss implementation details caring about computational efficiency and numerical stability. Through numerical experiments on synthetic and real kinetic models, we validate the efficiency, numerical stability, and accuracy of the presented method.

math.NA

Algebraic combinatorial optimization on the degree of determinants of noncommutative symbolic matrices

We address the computation of the degrees of minors of a noncommutative symbolic matrix of form \[ A[c] := \sum_{k=1}^m A_k t^{c_k} x_k, \] where $A_k$ are matrices over a field $\mathbb{K}$, $x_i$ are noncommutative variables, $c_k$ are integer weights, and $t$ is a commuting variable specifying the degree. This problem extends noncommutative Edmonds' problem (Ivanyos et al. 2017), and can formulate various combinatorial optimization problems. Extending the study by Hirai 2018, and Hirai, Ikeda 2022, we provide novel duality theorems and polyhedral characterization for the maximum degrees of minors of $A[c]$ of all sizes, and develop a strongly polynomial-time algorithm for computing them. This algorithm is viewed as a unified algebraization of the classical Hungarian method for bipartite matching and the weight-splitting algorithm for linear matroid intersection. As applications, we provide polynomial-time algorithms for weighted fractional linear matroid matching and linear optimization over rank-2 Brascamp-Lieb polytopes.

math.CO

Generalization Bound and Learning Methods for Data-Driven Projections in Linear Programming

How to solve high-dimensional linear programs (LPs) efficiently is a fundamental question. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in reducing LP sizes using random projections, which can accelerate solving LPs independently of improving LP solvers. This paper explores a new direction of data-driven projections, which use projection matrices learned from data instead of random projection matrices. Given training data of $n$-dimensional LPs, we learn an $n\times k$ projection matrix with $n > k$. When addressing a future LP instance, we reduce its dimensionality from $n$ to $k$ via the learned projection matrix, solve the resulting LP to obtain a $k$-dimensional solution, and apply the learned matrix to it to recover an $n$-dimensional solution. On the theoretical side, a natural question is: how much data is sufficient to ensure the quality of recovered solutions? We address this question based on the framework of data-driven algorithm design, which connects the amount of data sufficient for establishing generalization bounds to the pseudo-dimension of performance metrics. We obtain an $\tilde{\mathrm{O}}(nk^2)$ upper bound on the pseudo-dimension, where $\tilde{\mathrm{O}}$ compresses logarithmic factors. We also provide an $\Omega(nk)$ lower bound, implying our result is tight up to an $\tilde{\mathrm{O}}(k)$ factor. On the practical side, we explore two simple methods for learning projection matrices: PCA- and gradient-based methods. While the former is relatively efficient, the latter can sometimes achieve better solution quality. Experiments demonstrate that learning projection matrices from data is indeed beneficial: it leads to significantly higher solution quality than the existing random projection while greatly reducing the time for solving LPs.

cs.LG