Abstract
Let (L,*) be a semilattice, and let c: L →[0, ∞ ) be monotone and increasing on L. We state the Minimum Join problem as: given size n sub-collection X of L and integer k with 1 ≤ k ≤ n, find a size k sub-collection (x′1, x′2, ..., x′ k ) of X that minimizes c(x′1 * x′2 * ⋯ * x′ k ). If c(a * b) ≤ c(a) + c(b) holds, we call this the Minimum Subadditive Join (MSJ) problem and present a greedy (k − p + 1)-approximation algorithm requiring O((k − p)n + n p) joins for constant integer 0 < p ≤ k. We show that the MSJ Minimum Coverage problem of selecting k out of n finite sets such that their union is minimal is essentially as hard to approximate as the Maximum Balanced Complete Bipartite Subgraph (MBCBS) problem. The motivating by-product of the above is that the privacy in databases related k-ambiguity problem over L with subadditive information loss can be approximated within k − p, and that the k-ambiguity problem is essentially at least as hard to approximate as MBCBS.
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Vinterbo, S.A. (2007). A Stab at Approximating Minimum Subadditive Join. In: Dehne, F., Sack, JR., Zeh, N. (eds) Algorithms and Data Structures. WADS 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4619. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73951-7_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73951-7_19
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