This book documents the state of the art in combinatorial optimization, presenting approximate solutions of virtually all relevant classes of NP-hard optimization problems. The wealth of problems, algorithms, results, and techniques make it an indispensible source of reference for professionals. The text smoothly integrates numerous illustrations, examples, and exercises.

This Festschrift is in honor of Ker-I Ko, Professor in the Stony Brook University, USA. Ker-I Ko was one of the founding fathers of computational complexity over real numbers and analysis. He and Harvey Friedman devised a theoretical model for real number computations by extending the computation of Turing machines. He contributed significantly to advancing the theory of structural complexity, especially on polynomial-time isomorphism, instance complexity, and relativization of polynomial-time hierarchy. Ker-I also made many contributions to approximation algorithm theory of combinatorial optimization problems. This volume contains 17 contributions in the area of complexity and approximation. Those articles are authored by researchers over the world, including North America, Europe and Asia. Most of them are co-authors, colleagues, friends, and students of Ker-I Ko.

This book focuses on the development of approximation-related algorithms and their relevant applications. Individual contributions are written by leading experts and reflect emerging directions and connections in data approximation and optimization. Chapters discuss state of the art topics with highly relevant applications throughout science, engineering, technology and social sciences. Academics, researchers, data science practitioners, business analysts, social sciences investigators and graduate students will find the number of illustrations, applications, and examples provided useful. This volume is based on the conference Approximation and Optimization: Algorithms, Complexity, and Applications, which was held in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, June 29–30, 2017. The mix of survey and research content includes topics in approximations to discrete noisy data; binary sequences; design of networks and energy systems; fuzzy control; large scale optimization; noisy data; data-dependent approximation; networked control systems; machine learning ; optimal design; no free lunch theorem; non-linearly constrained optimization; spectroscopy.

Computational complexity, originated from the interactions between computer science and numerical optimization, is one of the major theories that have revolutionized the approach to solving optimization problems and to analyzing their intrinsic difficulty.The main focus of complexity is the study of whether existing algorithms are efficient for the solution of problems, and which problems are likely to be tractable.The quest for developing efficient algorithms leads also to elegant general approaches for solving optimization problems, and reveals surprising connections among problems and their solutions.This book is a collection of articles on recent complexity developments in numerical optimization. The topics covered include complexity of approximation algorithms, new polynomial time algorithms for convex quadratic minimization, interior point algorithms, complexity issues regarding test generation of NP-hard problems, complexity of scheduling problems, min-max, fractional combinatorial optimization, fixed point computations and network flow problems.The collection of articles provide a broad spectrum of the direction in which research is going and help to elucidate the nature of computational complexity in optimization. The book will be a valuable source of information to faculty, students and researchers in numerical optimization and related areas.

New and classical results in computational complexity, including interactive proofs, PCP, derandomization, and quantum computation. Ideal for graduate students.

There has been much recent progress in approximation algorithms for nonconvex continuous and discrete problems from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. In discrete (or combinatorial) optimization many approaches have been developed recently that link the discrete universe to the continuous universe through geomet ric, analytic, and algebraic techniques. Such techniques include global optimization formulations, semidefinite programming, and spectral theory. As a result new ap proximate algorithms have been discovered and many new computational approaches have been developed. Similarly, for many continuous nonconvex optimization prob lems, new approximate algorithms have been developed based on semidefinite pro gramming and new randomization techniques. On the other hand, computational complexity, originating from the interactions between computer science and numeri cal optimization, is one of the major theories that have revolutionized the approach to solving optimization problems and to analyzing their intrinsic difficulty. The main focus of complexity is the study of whether existing algorithms are efficient for the solution of problems, and which problems are likely to be tractable. The quest for developing efficient algorithms leads also to elegant general approaches for solving optimization problems, and reveals surprising connections among problems and their solutions. A conference on Approximation and Complexity in Numerical Optimization: Con tinuous and Discrete Problems was held during February 28 to March 2, 1999 at the Center for Applied Optimization of the University of Florida.