With the advent of approximation algorithms for NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, several techniques from exact optimization such as the primal-dual method have proven their staying power and versatility. This book describes a simple and powerful method that is iterative in essence, and similarly useful in a variety of settings for exact and approximate optimization. The authors highlight the commonality and uses of this method to prove a variety of classical polyhedral results on matchings, trees, matroids, and flows. The presentation style is elementary enough to be accessible to...

This book constitutes the joint refereed proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, APPROX 2011, and the 15th International Workshop on Randomization and Computation, RANDOM 2011, held in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in August 2011. The volume presents 29 revised full papers of the APPROX 2011 workshop, selected from 66 submissions, and 29 revised full papers of the RANDOM 2011 workshop, selected from 64 submissions. They were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. In addition two abstracts of invited...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory, SWAT 2014, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July 2014. The 33 papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 134 submissions. The papers present original research and cover a wide range of topics in the field of design and analysis of algorithms and data structures including but not limited to approximation algorithms, parameterized algorithms, computational biology, computational geometry and topology, distributed algorithms, external-memory...