Approximation Algorithms [Paperback]

Covering the basic techniques used in the latest research work, the author consolidates progress made so far, including some very recent and promising results, and conveys the beauty and excitement of work in the field. He gives clear, lucid explanations of key results and ideas, with intuitive proofs, and provides critical examples and numerous illustrations to help elucidate the algorithms. Many of the results presented have been simplified and new insights provided. Of interest to theoretical computer scientists, operations researchers, and discrete mathematicians.Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Most natural optimization problems, including those arising in important application areas, are NP-hard. Therefore, under the widely believed con? jecture that P -=/= NP, their exact solution is prohibitively time consuming. Charting the landscape of approximability of these problems, via polynomial time algorithms, therefore becomes a compelling subject of scientific inquiry in computer science and mathematics. This book presents the theory of ap? proximation algorithms as it stands today. It is reasonable to expect the picture to change with time. This book is divided into three parts. In Part I we cover combinato? rial algorithms for a number of important problems, using a wide variety of algorithm design techniques. The latter may give Part I a non-cohesive appearance. However, this is to be expected - nature is very rich, and we cannot expect a few tricks to help solve the diverse collection of NP-hard problems. Indeed, in this part, we have purposely refrained from tightly cat? egorizing algorithmic techniques so as not to trivialize matters. Instead, we have attempted to capture, as accurately as possible, the individual character of each problem, and point out connections between problems and algorithms for solving them.1 Introduction.- I. Combinatorial Algorithms.- 2 Set Cl³n