Covering network designs, discrete convex analysis, facility location and clustering problems, matching games, and parameterized complexity, this book discusses theoretical aspects of combinatorial optimization and graph algorithms. Contributions are by renowned researchers who attended NII Shonan meetings on this essential topic. The collection contained here provides readers with the outcome of the authors’ research and productive meetings on this dynamic area, ranging from computer science and mathematics to operations research. Networks are ubiquitous in today's world: the Web, online social networks, and search-and-query click logs can lead to a graph that consists of vertices and edges. Such networks are growing so fast that it is essential to design algorithms to work for these large networks. Graph algorithms comprise an area in computer science that works to design efficient algorithms for networks. Here one can work on theoretical or practical problems where implementation of an algorithm for large networks is needed. In two of the chapters, recent results in graph matching games and fixed parameter tractability are surveyed. Combinatorial optimization is an intersection of operations research and mathematics, especially discrete mathematics, which deals with new questions and new problems, attempting to find an optimum object from a finite set of objects. Most problems in combinatorial optimization are not tractable (i.e., NP-hard). Therefore it is necessary to design an approximation algorithm for them. To tackle these problems requires the development and combination of ideas and techniques from diverse mathematical areas including complexity theory, algorithm theory, and matroids as well as graph theory, combinatorics, convex and nonlinear optimization, and discrete and convex geometry. Overall, the book presents recent progress in facility location, network design, and discrete convex analysis.

Are you looking for new lectures for your course on algorithms, combinatorial optimization, or algorithmic game theory? Maybe you need a convenient source of relevant, current topics for a graduate student or advanced undergraduate student seminar? Or perhaps you just want an enjoyable look at some beautiful mathematical and algorithmic results, ideas, proofs, concepts, and techniques in discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science? Gems of Combinatorial Optimization and Graph Algorithms is a handpicked collection of up-to-date articles, carefully prepared by a select group of international experts, who have contributed some of their most mathematically or algorithmically elegant ideas. Topics include longest tours and Steiner trees in geometric spaces, cartograms, resource buying games, congestion games, selfish routing, revenue equivalence and shortest paths, scheduling, linear structures in graphs, contraction hierarchies, budgeted matching problems, and motifs in networks. This volume is aimed at readers with some familiarity of combinatorial optimization, and appeals to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students alike.

The fusion between graph theory and combinatorial optimization has led to theoretically profound and practically useful algorithms, yet there is no book that currently covers both areas together. Handbook of Graph Theory, Combinatorial Optimization, and Algorithms is the first to present a unified, comprehensive treatment of both graph theory and c

Graph theory is very much tied to the geometric properties of optimization and combinatorial optimization. Moreover, graph theory's geometric properties are at the core of many research interests in operations research and applied mathematics. Its techniques have been used in solving many classical problems including maximum flow problems, independent set problems, and the traveling salesman problem. Graph Theory and Combinatorial Optimization explores the field's classical foundations and its developing theories, ideas and applications to new problems. The book examines the geometric properties of graph theory and its widening uses in combinatorial optimization theory and application. The field's leading researchers have contributed chapters in their areas of expertise.

Historically, there is a close connection between geometry and optImization. This is illustrated by methods like the gradient method and the simplex method, which are associated with clear geometric pictures. In combinatorial optimization, however, many of the strongest and most frequently used algorithms are based on the discrete structure of the problems: the greedy algorithm, shortest path and alternating path methods, branch-and-bound, etc. In the last several years geometric methods, in particular polyhedral combinatorics, have played a more and more profound role in combinatorial optimization as well. Our book discusses two recent geometric algorithms that have turned out to have particularly interesting consequences in combinatorial optimization, at least from a theoretical point of view. These algorithms are able to utilize the rich body of results in polyhedral combinatorics. The first of these algorithms is the ellipsoid method, developed for nonlinear programming by N. Z. Shor, D. B. Yudin, and A. S. NemirovskiI. It was a great surprise when L. G. Khachiyan showed that this method can be adapted to solve linear programs in polynomial time, thus solving an important open theoretical problem. While the ellipsoid method has not proved to be competitive with the simplex method in practice, it does have some features which make it particularly suited for the purposes of combinatorial optimization. The second algorithm we discuss finds its roots in the classical "geometry of numbers", developed by Minkowski. This method has had traditionally deep applications in number theory, in particular in diophantine approximation.

This graduate-level text considers the Soviet ellipsoid algorithm for linear programming; efficient algorithms for network flow, matching, spanning trees, and matroids; the theory of NP-complete problems; local search heuristics for NP-complete problems, more. 1982 edition.

Graph algorithms are easy to visualize and indeed there already exists a variety of packages to animate the dynamics when solving problems from graph theory. Still it can be difficult to understand the ideas behind the algorithm from the dynamic display alone. CATBox consists of a software system for animating graph algorithms and a course book which we developed simultaneously. The software system presents both the algorithm and the graph and puts the user always in control of the actual code that is executed. In the course book, intended for readers at advanced undergraduate or graduate level, computer exercises and examples replace the usual static pictures of algorithm dynamics. For this volume we have chosen solely algorithms for classical problems from combinatorial optimization, such as minimum spanning trees, shortest paths, maximum flows, minimum cost flows, weighted and unweighted matchings both for bipartite and non-bipartite graphs. Find more information at http://schliep.org/CATBox/.