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Main Author: Buchheim, Christoph
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.25028
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author Buchheim, Christoph
author_facet Buchheim, Christoph
contents Two-stage stochastic linear optimization is known to be #P-hard when all involved random variables are independently and uniformly distributed over intervals, even with fixed recourse. We show that this problem is actually #P-hard in the strong sense. More surprisingly, this hardness persists when the random vector is one-dimensional, i.e., uniformly distributed over a single interval. To obtain this result, we show that computing the area of a two-dimensional polytope given by a compact extended formulation is strongly #P-hard. Furthermore, we obtain the same complexity result in case the number of second-stage constraints is fixed (for a problem in standard form), while fixing the number of second-stage variables leads to a weakly #P-hard problem. Finally, if both the dimension of the random vector and the number of second-stage constraints are fixed, the problem turns out to be tractable.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_25028
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A note on the complexity of two-stage stochastic linear optimization with small second stage
Buchheim, Christoph
Optimization and Control
90C15
Two-stage stochastic linear optimization is known to be #P-hard when all involved random variables are independently and uniformly distributed over intervals, even with fixed recourse. We show that this problem is actually #P-hard in the strong sense. More surprisingly, this hardness persists when the random vector is one-dimensional, i.e., uniformly distributed over a single interval. To obtain this result, we show that computing the area of a two-dimensional polytope given by a compact extended formulation is strongly #P-hard. Furthermore, we obtain the same complexity result in case the number of second-stage constraints is fixed (for a problem in standard form), while fixing the number of second-stage variables leads to a weakly #P-hard problem. Finally, if both the dimension of the random vector and the number of second-stage constraints are fixed, the problem turns out to be tractable.
title A note on the complexity of two-stage stochastic linear optimization with small second stage
topic Optimization and Control
90C15
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.25028