Accomplice Manipulation of the Deferred Acceptance Algorithm

The deferred acceptance algorithm is an elegant solution to the stable matching problem that guarantees optimality and truthfulness for one side of the market. Despite these desirable guarantees, it is susceptible to strategic misreporting of preferences by the agents on the other side. We study a novel model of strategic behavior under the deferred acceptance algorithm: manipulation through an accomplice. Here, an agent on the proposed-to side (say, a woman) partners with an agent on the proposing side---an accomplice---to manipulate on her behalf (possibly at the expense of worsening his match). We show that the optimal manipulation strategy for an accomplice comprises of promoting exactly one woman in his true list (i.e., an inconspicuous manipulation). This structural result immediately gives a polynomial-time algorithm for computing an optimal accomplice manipulation. We also study the conditions under which the manipulated matching is stable with respect to the true preferences. Our experimental results show that accomplice manipulation outperforms self manipulation both in terms of the frequency of occurrence as well as the quality of matched partners.

Closing the Gap for Makespan Scheduling via Sparsification Techniques

Makespan scheduling on identical machines is one of the most basic and fundamental packing problems studied in the discrete optimization literature. It asks for an assignment of n jobs to a set of m identical machines that minimizes the makespan. The problem is strongly NP-hard, and thus we do not expect a ([Formula: see text])-approximation algorithm with a running time that depends polynomially on [Formula: see text]. It has been recently shown that a subexponential running time on [Formula: see text] would imply that the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) fails. A long sequence of algorithms have been developed that try to obtain low dependencies on [Formula: see text], the better of which achieves a quadratic running time on the exponent. In this paper we obtain an algorithm with an almost-linear dependency on [Formula: see text] in the exponent, which is tight under ETH up to logarithmic factors. Our main technical contribution is a new structural result on the configuration-IP integer linear program. More precisely, we show the existence of a highly symmetric and sparse optimal solution, in which all but a constant number of machines are assigned a configuration with small support. This structure can then be exploited by integer programming techniques and enumeration. We believe that our structural result is of independent interest and should find applications to other settings. We exemplify this by applying our structural results to the minimum makespan problem on related machines and to a larger class of objective functions on parallel machines. For all these cases, we obtain an efficient PTAS with running time with an almost-linear dependency on [Formula: see text] and polynomial in n.

Topology of tropical moduli of weighted stable curves

The moduli space Δg,w of tropical w-weighted stable curves of volume 1 is naturally identified with the dual complex of the divisor of singular curves in Hassett’s spaces of w-weighted stable curves. If at least two of the weights are 1, we prove that Δ0, w is homotopic to a wedge sum of spheres, possibly of varying dimensions. Under additional natural hypotheses on the weight vector, we establish explicit formulas for the Betti numbers of the spaces. We exhibit infinite families of weights for which the space Δ0,w is disconnected and for which the fundamental group of Δ0,w has torsion. In the latter case, the universal cover is shown to have a natural modular interpretation. This places the weighted variant of the space in stark contrast to the heavy/light cases studied previously by Vogtmann and Cavalieri–Hampe–Markwig–Ranganathan. Finally, we prove a structural result relating the spaces of weighted stable curves in genus 0 and 1, and leverage this to extend several of our genus 0 results to the spaces Δ1,w.

Wiener index of unicycle graphs with given number of even degree vertices

The Wiener index of a connected graph is the sum of the distance of all pairs of distinct vertices. It was introduced by Wiener in 1947 to analyze some aspects of branching by fitting experimental data for several properties of alkane compounds. Denote by [Formula: see text] the set of unicyclic graphs with [Formula: see text] vertices and [Formula: see text] vertices of even degree. In this paper, we present a structural result on the graphs in [Formula: see text] with minimum Wiener index and completely characterize such graphs when [Formula: see text].

Hereditary Semiorders and Enumeration of Semiorders by Dimension

In 2010, Bousquet-Mélou et al. defined sequences of nonnegative integers called ascent sequences and showed that the ascent sequences of length $n$ are in one-to-one correspondence with the interval orders, i.e., the posets not containing the poset $\mathbf{2}+\mathbf{2}$. Through the use of generating functions, this provided an answer to the longstanding open question of enumerating the (unlabeled) interval orders. A semiorder is an interval order having a representation in which all intervals have the same length. In terms of forbidden subposets, the semiorders exclude $\mathbf{2}+\mathbf{2}$ and $\mathbf{1}+\mathbf{3}$. The number of unlabeled semiorders on $n$ points has long been known to be the $n$th Catalan number. However, describing the ascent sequences that correspond to the semiorders under the bijection of Bousquet-Mélou et al. has proved difficult. In this paper, we discuss a major part of the difficulty in this area: the ascent sequence corresponding to a semiorder may have an initial subsequence that corresponds to an interval order that is not a semiorder. We define the hereditary semiorders to be those corresponding to an ascent sequence for which every initial subsequence also corresponds to a semiorder. We provide a structural result that characterizes the hereditary semiorders and use this characterization to determine the ordinary generating function for hereditary semiorders. We also use our characterization of hereditary semiorders and the characterization of semiorders of dimension $3$ given by Rabinovitch to provide a structural description of the semiorders of dimension at most $2$. From this description, we are able to determine the ordinary generating function for the semiorders of dimension at most $2$.

Pseudo Maurer–Cartan perturbation algebra and pseudo perturbation lemma

We introduce the pseudo Maurer–Cartan perturbation algebra, establish a structural result and explore the structure of this algebra. That structural result entails, as a consequence, what we refer to as the pseudo perturbation lemma. This lemma, in turn, implies the ordinary perturbation lemma.