Abstract
Motivated by applications in risk management of computational systems, we focus our attention on a special case of the partial vertex cover problem, where the underlying graph is assumed to be a tree. Here, we consider four possible versions of this setting, depending on whether vertices and edges are weighted or not. Two of these versions, where edges are assumed to be unweighted, are known to be polynomial-time solvable. However, the computational complexity of this problem with weighted edges, and possibly with weighted vertices, has not been determined yet. The main contribution of this paper is to resolve these questions by fully characterizing which variants of partial vertex cover remain intractable in trees, and which can be efficiently solved. In particular, we propose a pseudo-polynomial DP-based algorithm for the most general case of having weights on both edges and vertices, which is proven to be NP-hard. This algorithm provides a polynomialtime solution method when weights are limited to edges, and combined with additional scaling ideas, leads to an FPTAS for the general case. A secondary contribution of this work is to propose a novel way of using centroid decompositions in trees, which could be useful in other settings as well.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | SOFSEM 2017 |
Subtitle of host publication | Theory and Practice of Computer Science - 43rd International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Proceedings |
Editors | Christel Baier, Mark van den Brand, Johann Eder, Mike Hinchey, Tiziana Margaria, Bernhard Steffen |
Publisher | Springer Verlag |
Pages | 350-360 |
Number of pages | 11 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319519623 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2017 |
Event | 43rd Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2017 - Limerick, Ireland Duration: 16 Jan 2017 → 20 Jan 2017 |
Publication series
Name | Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) |
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Volume | 10139 LNCS |
ISSN (Print) | 0302-9743 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 1611-3349 |
Conference
Conference | 43rd Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2017 |
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Country/Territory | Ireland |
City | Limerick |
Period | 16/01/17 → 20/01/17 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© Springer International Publishing AG 2017.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Theoretical Computer Science
- General Computer Science