Generating More Boundary Elements of Subset Projections

Composition problem is considered for partition constrained vertex subsets of n dimensional unit cube E^n . Generating numerical characteristics of E^n subsets partitions is considered by means of the same characteristics in 1 − n dimensional unit cube, and construction of corresponding subsets is given for a special particular case. Using pairs of lower layer characteristic vectors for E^(1-n) more characteristic vectors for E^n are composed which are boundary from one side, and which take part in practical recognition of validness of a given candidate vector of partitions.

As representações externas - na resolução de problemas matemáticos no 2º e 3º anos do ensino básico

Relatório de estágio para obtenção de grau de mestre em Educação pré-escolar e Ensino do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

On f-vectors of polytopes and matroids

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Extended formulations, nonnegative factorizations, and randomized communication protocols

An extended formulation of a polyhedron P is a linear description of a polyhedron Q together with a linear map π such that π(Q)=P. These objects are of fundamental importance in polyhedral combinatorics and optimization theory, and the subject of a number of studies. Yannakakis’ factorization theorem (Yannakakis in J Comput Syst Sci 43(3):441–466, 1991) provides a surprising connection between extended formulations and communication complexity, showing that the smallest size of an extended formulation of $$P$$P equals the nonnegative rank of its slack matrix S. Moreover, Yannakakis also shows that the nonnegative rank of S is at most 2^c, where c is the complexity of any deterministic protocol computing S. In this paper, we show that the latter result can be strengthened when we allow protocols to be randomized. In particular, we prove that the base-2 logarithm of the nonnegative rank of any nonnegative matrix equals the minimum complexity of a randomized communication protocol computing the matrix in expectation. Using Yannakakis’ factorization theorem, this implies that the base-2 logarithm of the smallest size of an extended formulation of a polytope P equals the minimum complexity of a randomized communication protocol computing the slack matrix of P in expectation. We show that allowing randomization in the protocol can be crucial for obtaining small extended formulations. Specifically, we prove that for the spanning tree and perfect matching polytopes, small variance in the protocol forces large size in the extended formulation.

As representações externas - na resolução de problemas matemáticos no 2º e 3º anos do ensino básico

Relatório de estágio para obtenção de grau de mestre em Educação pré-escolar e Ensino do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

Privileged Words and Sturmian Words

This dissertation has two almost unrelated themes: privileged words and Sturmian words. Privileged words are a new class of words introduced recently. A word is privileged if it is a complete first return to a shorter privileged word, the shortest privileged words being letters and the empty word. Here we give and prove almost all results on privileged words known to date. On the other hand, the study of Sturmian words is a well-established topic in combinatorics on words. In this dissertation, we focus on questions concerning repetitions in Sturmian words, reproving old results and giving new ones, and on establishing completely new research directions. The study of privileged words presented in this dissertation aims to derive their basic properties and to answer basic questions regarding them. We explore a connection between privileged words and palindromes and seek out answers to questions on context-freeness, computability, and enumeration. It turns out that the language of privileged words is not context-free, but privileged words are recognizable by a linear-time algorithm. A lower bound on the number of binary privileged words of given length is proven. The main interest, however, lies in the privileged complexity functions of the Thue-Morse word and Sturmian words. We derive recurrences for computing the privileged complexity function of the Thue-Morse word, and we prove that Sturmian words are characterized by their privileged complexity function. As a slightly separate topic, we give an overview of a certain method of automated theorem-proving and show how it can be applied to study privileged factors of automatic words. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to Sturmian words. We extensively exploit the interpretation of Sturmian words as irrational rotation words. The essential tools are continued fractions and elementary, but powerful, results of Diophantine approximation theory. With these tools at our disposal, we reprove old results on powers occurring in Sturmian words with emphasis on the fractional index of a Sturmian word. Further, we consider abelian powers and abelian repetitions and characterize the maximum exponents of abelian powers with given period occurring in a Sturmian word in terms of the continued fraction expansion of its slope. We define the notion of abelian critical exponent for Sturmian words and explore its connection to the Lagrange spectrum of irrational numbers. The results obtained are often specialized for the Fibonacci word; for instance, we show that the minimum abelian period of a factor of the Fibonacci word is a Fibonacci number. In addition, we propose a completely new research topic: the square root map. We prove that the square root map preserves the language of any Sturmian word. Moreover, we construct a family of non-Sturmian optimal squareful words whose language the square root map also preserves.This construction yields examples of aperiodic infinite words whose square roots are periodic.

Mathematical Programming Models for Influence Maximization on Social Networks

In this dissertation, we apply mathematical programming techniques (i.e., integer programming and polyhedral combinatorics) to develop exact approaches for influence maximization on social networks. We study four combinatorial optimization problems that deal with maximizing influence at minimum cost over a social network. To our knowl- edge, all previous work to date involving influence maximization problems has focused on heuristics and approximation. We start with the following viral marketing problem that has attracted a significant amount of interest from the computer science literature. Given a social network, find a target set of customers to seed with a product. Then, a cascade will be caused by these initial adopters and other people start to adopt this product due to the influence they re- ceive from earlier adopters. The idea is to find the minimum cost that results in the entire network adopting the product. We first study a problem called the Weighted Target Set Selection (WTSS) Prob- lem. In the WTSS problem, the diffusion can take place over as many time periods as needed and a free product is given out to the individuals in the target set. Restricting the number of time periods that the diffusion takes place over to be one, we obtain a problem called the Positive Influence Dominating Set (PIDS) problem. Next, incorporating partial incentives, we consider a problem called the Least Cost Influence Problem (LCIP). The fourth problem studied is the One Time Period Least Cost Influence Problem (1TPLCIP) which is identical to the LCIP except that we restrict the number of time periods that the diffusion takes place over to be one. We apply a common research paradigm to each of these four problems. First, we work on special graphs: trees and cycles. Based on the insights we obtain from special graphs, we develop efficient methods for general graphs. On trees, first, we propose a polynomial time algorithm. More importantly, we present a tight and compact extended formulation. We also project the extended formulation onto the space of the natural vari- ables that gives the polytope on trees. Next, building upon the result for trees---we derive the polytope on cycles for the WTSS problem; as well as a polynomial time algorithm on cycles. This leads to our contribution on general graphs. For the WTSS problem and the LCIP, using the observation that the influence propagation network must be a directed acyclic graph (DAG), the strong formulation for trees can be embedded into a formulation on general graphs. We use this to design and implement a branch-and-cut approach for the WTSS problem and the LCIP. In our computational study, we are able to obtain high quality solutions for random graph instances with up to 10,000 nodes and 20,000 edges (40,000 arcs) within a reasonable amount of time.