On Duality Gap in Binary Quadratic Programming

We present in this paper new results on the duality gap between the binary quadratic optimization problem and its Lagrangian dual or semidefinite programming relaxation. We first derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the zero duality gap and discuss its relationship with the polynomial solvability of the primal problem. We then characterize the zeroness … Read more

Binary positive semidefinite matrices and associated integer polytopes

We consider the positive semidefinite (psd) matrices with binary entries, along with the corresponding integer polytopes. We begin by establishing some basic properties of these matrices and polytopes. Then, we show that several families of integer polytopes in the literature — the cut, boolean quadric, multicut and clique partitioning polytopes — are faces of binary … Read more

On generalized network design polyhedra

In recent years, there has been an increased literature on so-called Generalized Network Design Problems, such as the Generalized Minimum Spanning Tree Problem and the Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem. In such problems, the node set of a graph is partitioned into clusters, and the feasible solutions must contain one node from each cluster. Up to … Read more

Approximating the asymmetric profitable tour

We study the version of the asymmetric prize collecting traveling salesman problem, where the objective is to find a directed tour that visits a subset of vertices such that the length of the tour plus the sum of penalties associated with vertices not in the tour is as small as possible. In \cite{Amico}, the authors … Read more

An Improved Branch-and-Bound Method for Maximum Monomial Agreement

The NP-hard Maximum Monomial Agreement (MMA) problem consists of finding a single logical conjunction that best fits a weighted dataset of “positive” and “negative” binary vectors. Computing classifiers using boosting methods involves a maximum agreement subproblem at each iteration, although such subproblems are typically solved by heuristic methods. Here, we describe an exact branch and … Read more

Solving Large Steiner Triple Covering Problems

Computing the 1-width of the incidence matrix of a Steiner Triple System gives rise to small set covering instances that provide a computational challenge for integer programming techniques. One major source of difficulty for instances of this family is their highly symmetric structure, which impairs the performance of most branch-and-bound algorithms. The largest instance in … Read more

On the connection of the Sherali-Adams closure and border bases

The Sherali-Adams lift-and-project hierarchy is a fundamental construct in integer programming, which provides successively tighter linear programming relaxations of the integer hull of a polytope. We initiate a new approach to understanding the Sherali-Adams procedure by relating it to methods from computational algebraic geometry. Our main result is a refinement of the Sherali-Adams procedure that … Read more

GRASP with path relinking heuristics for the antibandwidth problem

This paper proposes a linear integer programming formulation and several heuristics based on GRASP and path relinking for the antibandwidth problem. In the antibandwidth problem, one is given an undirected graph with N nodes and must label the nodes in a way that each node receives a unique label from the set {1, 2, …, … Read more

Information-Based Branching Schemes for Binary Linear Mixed Integer Problems

Branching variable selection can greatly a ffect the eff ectiveness and efficiency of a branch-and- bound algorithm. Traditional approaches to branching variable selection rely on estimating the eff ect of the candidate variables on the objective function. We propose an approach which is empowered by exploiting the information contained in a family of fathomed subproblems, collected beforehand from … Read more

The Multidimensional Knapsack Problem: Structure and Algorithms

We study the multidimensional knapsack problem, present some theoretical and empirical results about its structure, and evaluate different Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based, metaheuristic, and collaborative approaches for it. We start by considering the distances between optimal solutions to the LP-relaxation and the original problem and then introduce a new core concept for the MKP, … Read more