---
title: "Approximation Algorithms"
type: concept
source: https://www.jemoka.com/posts/kbhapproximation_algorithms/
confidence: high
status: active
---

Probabilistically Checkable Proofs Every statement that has a polynomial time checkable proof has such a proof where the verifier only reads \(O(1)\) (constant) bits of the proof such hat&hellip;
perfect completeness: correct statements will be accepted with probability 1 soundness: false statements will be rejected with probability 0.99 (with epsilon as the reading constant increases) PCP Theorem For some constant \(\alpha &gt; 0\), and for ever language \(L \in NP\), there exists a polynomial-time that makes every input \(x\) into a \(f(x)\) such that&hellip;
if \(x \in L\), then \(f(x) \in \text{SAT}\) if \(x \neq L\), then there is no assignment that satisfies more than \(\qty(1-\alpha)\) fraction of \(f(x)\) clauses That is, a sufficiently good approximation of Max-SAT will imply \(P = NP\) (because we cloud just us that Max-SAT to disambiguate whether or not \(f(x)\) has a maximum satisfiable over the line of \((1-\alpha)\) and declare it in or out of the language.
Provability By definition everything in \(NP\) has a short and checkable proof (in polynomial time) &hellip;same can go for coNP and if we add interaction.
every problem in has an interactive proof!!!
Zero-Knowledge Proof This is a type of interactive proof that reveal no knowledge other than the membership query you asked; i.e. I give no witness but I will convince you.
You can actually formulate any PSPACE as a Zero-Knowledge Proof.
You will notice that the proof above is kind of zero-knowledge (if I am simply trying to verify stuff is isomorphic, knowing which graph is isomorphic adds no other information)
Approximation Hardness For particular problems, we can&rsquo;t even approximate it well enough.
Interestingly, for many problems, we know exactly what the correct approximation factor is; we even know what the approximation boundary is, so beyond this line we know we can&rsquo;t solve it unless \(P= NP\).
To show these results, we will need approximation-preserving reductions
approximation preserving reductions for instance, (\(3SAT \leq_{P} \text{CLIQUE}\)) is very approximation preserving because the size of the clique corresponds exactly to the number of clauses you can satisfy.
However, (\(\text{IS} \leq_{P} \text{{Vertex-Cover}}\)) is super not approximation preserving; recall that our argument is that \(V - IS\) is a vertex cover, meaning \(\qty(G, k) \Leftrightarrow (G, |V|-k)\) is the sizes of the independent set and vertex covers respectively.
These are not good approximations of each other; suppose the minimum vertex cover is \(k \ll n\), this make the maximum independent set \(n-k\). An approximation of independent set will give a vertex cover size of \(\frac{n}{c}\) (since \(k\) is, as said before, very small), which means the approximate VC given would be \(n - \frac{n}{c}\) which may not be anywhere near \(n-k\).
example Recall problem:
we want to find the smallest &mdash;this could be approximated greedily which will find a which is at most twice as large as the original (a &ldquo;two-approximation&rdquo;)
the algorithm: set \(C = \emptyset\), and while there exists an uncovered edge \(e\), add both endpoints of such an \(e\) to \(C\)
prove:
it will work because for every uncovered edge, at least one of its endpoints is in the minimal vertex cover; so we add be greedy and just add both it 2x because we at most add 2x &ldquo;extra&rdquo; verticies Max-SAT given a (not just 3cnf), how many clauses can be satisfied? a maximization problem because we want to satisfy the maximal amount of clauses.
approximation: we can always satisfy a constant frication of all of the clauses: that is, when all clauses have at least 3 unique literals, we can satisfy at least 7/8 of all the clauses (i.e. we will get to \(\geq \frac{7}{8}\) clauses of the clauses than optimal solution).
We can&rsquo;t solve this even further (i.e. we can&rsquo;t solve up to \(\frac{7}{8}+\varepsilon\) for any \(\varepsilon &gt; 0\)) without \(P = NP\). see PCP Theorem
for other problems (such as cliques), no constant approximation may even occur
