600.469 / 600.669 Approximation Algorithms - Spring 2015

Instructor: Michael Dinitz
Lecture: T Th 3:00 - 4:20 pm, Hodson 316
Office Hours: Th 4:30 - 5:30 pm

Syllabus

Resources: There is no required textbook, but many lectures will cover topics from the following.

The Design of Approximation Algorithms, David P. Williamson and David B. Shmoys, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Scribe Notes

Template: .tex and .pdf

Students will take turns taking scribe notes, so that everyone ends up scribing the same number of lectures (up to rounding).

WS = the Williamson and Shmoys textbook

Please point out any typos in the notes.

Date	Topic	Reference	Scribe	Notes
Jan 27	Intro, Vertex Cover, Steiner Tree	WS - Chapter 1.1	N/A
Jan 29	Steiner Tree and TSP	WS - Chapter 2.4, Exercise 2.5	Katie Henry
Feb 3	Greedy: k-Center and Set Cover	WS - Chapter 2.2 and 1.6	Trevor Fisher
Feb 5	Greedy: Set Cover and Max-Coverage	WS - Chapter 1.6, Exercise 2.11	Zeyu Zhang
Feb 10	Local Search: Max-Cut and Min Degree Spanning Tree	WS - Chapter 2.6	Kuan Cheng
Feb 12	Local-Search: Min Degree Spanning Tree and Weighted Max-Cut	WS - Chapter 2.6	David Gong	HW1 released
Feb 17	Rounding and Dynamic Programming: Knapsack and Min-Makespan Scheduling	WS - Chapters 3.1, 3.2	Alexander Schiffhauer
Feb 19	Rounding and Dynamic Programming: Min-Makespan Scheduling and Bin Packing	WS - Chapters 3.2, 3.3	Gabriel Kaptchuk	HW1 due
Feb 24	Intro to Linear Programming for Approximation Algorithms	WS - Chapters 1.2, 1.3, Appendix A	Runze Tang
Feb 26	No class -- Mike out of town			HW2 released
March 3	Metric Facility Location	WS - Chapter 4.5	Poorya Mianjy
March 5	Snow day!			HW2 due
March 10	Randomized Rounding: Set Cover and Minimizing Congestion	WS - Chapters 1.7, 5.11	Torrey Kelly
March 12	Chernoff bounds: Minimizing Congestion and 3-Coloring	WS - Chapters 5.10, 5.11, 5.12	Zeyu Zhang
March 24	Randomized Rounding: Group Steiner Tree	GKR paper, Notes from CMU	David Gong	HW3 released
March 26	Tree Embeddings I	WS - Chapter 8.5	Alexander Schiffhauer
March 31	Tree Embeddings II	WS - Chapters 8.5, 8.6	Kuan Cheng	HW3 due
April 2	LPs as Metrics: Min-Cut and Multiway Cut	WS - Chapters 8.1, 8.2	Gabriel Kaptchuk
April 7	LPs as Metrics II: Multicut	WS - Chapter 8.3	Trevor Fisher
April 9	LP duality	WS - Chapter 1.6, Appendix A	Katie Henry
April 14	Dual Fitting and Primal-Dual	WS - Chapters 1.6, 7.1, 7.3	Poorya Mianjy	HW4 released
April 16	Primal-Dual: Steiner Forest	WS - Chapters 7.4	Runze Tang
April 21	Semidefinite Programming: Max-Cut	WS - Chapters 6.1, 6.2	Torrey Kelly	HW4 due
April 23	SDP II: Correlation Clustering and Max-2SAT	WS - Chapter 6.4	Michael Dinitz
April 28	Class Canceled
April 30	PCP Theorem and Hardness of Approximation	WS - Chapter 16

Assignments

Assignment 5: PDF, LaTeX. Due May 11.
Assignment 4: PDF, LaTeX. Due April 21. Solutions.
Assignment 3: PDF, LaTeX. Due March 31. Solutions.
Assignment 2: PDF, LaTeX. Due March 5.
Assignment 1: PDF, LaTeX. Due Feb 19

Announcements

Feb 26: On homework 2, for problems 1 and 3 you can assume that all weight, lengths, etc. are actually integers rather than reals (all of the problems can actually be solved with rational values, but it's easier just to think of them all as integers).
Jan 27: Welcome to the class!

Additional Resources

Some texts that are related to topics we will cover. They are useful for further study in this field.

Iterative Methods in Combinatorial Optimization, Lap Chi Lau, R. Ravi, and Mohit Singh, Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach, Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Approximation Algorithms, Vijay V. Vazirani, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2001.

Similar courses with nice scribe notes.

Approximation Algorithms by Zachary Friggstad
Approximation Algorithms by Chandra Chekuri
Approximation Algorithms by Anupam Gupta and R. Ravi
Advanced Approximation Algorithms by Anupam Gupta and Ryan O'Donnell

Courses on related material with nice scribe notes.

Topics in Combinatorial Optimization by Chandra Chekuri
The PCP Theorem and Hardness of Approximation by Venkatesan Guruswami and Ryan O'Donnell
Linear and Semidefinite Programming by Anupam Gupta and Ryan O'Donnell