Attempting the impossible: enumerating extremal submodular functions for n=6

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Hauptverfasser: Csirmaz, Elod P., Csirmaz, Laszlo
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Csirmaz, Elod P.
Csirmaz, Laszlo
author_facet Csirmaz, Elod P.
Csirmaz, Laszlo
contents Enumerating the extremal submodular functions defined on subsets of a fixed base set has only been done for base sets up to five elements. This paper reports the results of attempting to generate all such functions on a six-element base set. Using improved tools from polyhedral geometry, we have computed 360 billion of them, and provide the first reasonable estimate of their total number, which is expected to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times this number. The applied Double Description and Adjacency Decomposition methods require an insertion order of the defining inequalities. We introduce two novel orders, which speed up the computations significantly, and provide additional insight into the highly symmetric structure of submodular functions. We also present an improvement to the combinatorial test used as part of the Double Description method, and use statistical analyses to estimate the degeneracy of the polyhedral cone used to describe these functions. The statistical results also highlight the limitations of the applied methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_15502
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Attempting the impossible: enumerating extremal submodular functions for n=6
Csirmaz, Elod P.
Csirmaz, Laszlo
Combinatorics
Information Theory
52B05, 52B15, 68Q25, 90C57
Enumerating the extremal submodular functions defined on subsets of a fixed base set has only been done for base sets up to five elements. This paper reports the results of attempting to generate all such functions on a six-element base set. Using improved tools from polyhedral geometry, we have computed 360 billion of them, and provide the first reasonable estimate of their total number, which is expected to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times this number. The applied Double Description and Adjacency Decomposition methods require an insertion order of the defining inequalities. We introduce two novel orders, which speed up the computations significantly, and provide additional insight into the highly symmetric structure of submodular functions. We also present an improvement to the combinatorial test used as part of the Double Description method, and use statistical analyses to estimate the degeneracy of the polyhedral cone used to describe these functions. The statistical results also highlight the limitations of the applied methods.
title Attempting the impossible: enumerating extremal submodular functions for n=6
topic Combinatorics
Information Theory
52B05, 52B15, 68Q25, 90C57
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.15502