k-median and k-means are the two most popular objectives for clustering algorithms. Despite intensive effort, a good understanding of the approximability of these objectives, particularly in $\ell_p$-metrics, remains a major open problem. In this paper, we significantly improve upon the hardness of approximation factors known in literature for these objectives ... more >>>

In this paper, we show how one may (efficiently) construct two types of extremal combinatorial objects whose existence was previously conjectural.

(*) Panchromatic Graphs: For fixed integer k, a k-panchromatic graph is, roughly speaking, a balanced bipartite graph with one partition class equipartitioned into k colour classes in ... more >>>

Parameterization and approximation are two popular ways of coping with NP-hard problems. More recently, the two have also been combined to derive many interesting results. We survey developments in the area both from the algorithmic and hardness perspectives, with emphasis on new techniques and potential future research directions.

In this paper, we prove a general hardness amplification scheme for optimization problems based on the technique of direct products.

We say that an optimization problem $\Pi$ is direct product feasible if it is possible to efficiently aggregate any $k$ instances of $\Pi$ and form one large instance ... more >>>

The k-Even Set problem is a parameterized variant of the Minimum Distance Problem of linear codes over $\mathbb{F}_2$, which can be stated as follows: given a generator matrix A and an integer k, determine whether the code generated by A has distance at most k, or in other words, whether ... more >>>

Given a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb R^d$, the (monochromatic) Closest Pair problem asks to find a pair of distinct points in the set that are closest in the $\ell_p$-metric. Closest Pair is a fundamental problem in Computational Geometry and understanding its fine-grained complexity in the Euclidean metric when ... more >>>

The $k$-Even Set problem is a parameterized variant of the Minimum Distance Problem of linear codes over $\mathbb F_2$, which can be stated as follows: given a generator matrix $\mathbf A$ and an integer $k$, determine whether the code generated by $\mathbf A$ has distance at most $k$. Here, $k$ ... more >>>

We study the parameterized complexity of approximating the $k$-Dominating Set (domset) problem where an integer $k$ and a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices are given as input, and the goal is to find a dominating set of size at most $F(k) \cdot k$ whenever the graph $G$ has a dominating ... more >>>

We show a communication complexity lower bound for finding a correlated equilibrium of a two-player game. More precisely, we define a two-player $N \times N$ game called the 2-cycle game and show that the randomized communication complexity of finding a 1/poly($N$)-approximate correlated equilibrium of the 2-cycle game is $\Omega(N)$. For ... more >>>