Hi David,

Thank you very much for your reply. 

I hope you can help me on another question that I could not find the answer 
from the Internet.

I read some papers that stated "2-approximation" "3-approximation" or 
"6-approximation" for example the paper titled:

"Massaging a linear programming solution to give a 2-approximation for a 
generalization of the vertex cover problem"

What does actually "2-approximation" "3-approximation" or "6-approximation" 
means?

Thank-you.

Rdgs,
Paul




________________________________
From: David Bremner <brem...@unb.ca>
To: RC Loh <rc_...@yahoo.com.sg>
Cc: help-glpk@gnu.org
Sent: Wednesday, 25 November 2009 8:54:12
Subject: Re: [Help-glpk] Linear Programming Relaxation

RC Loh wrote:


>Just to confirm on question (2). I understand that GLPK also uses
>Interior Point method. Isn't the Interior Point method a polynomial
>time method?

Yes it is, but for linear programming, not for integer or mixed
integer programming.

>So with the Linear Programming Relaxation, the GLPK still does not
>runs in polynomial time?

A MIP solver needs to solve a whole search tree where each node is an
LP relaxation, and in general the number of LP relaxations solved is
not bounded by a polynomial in the input size.  There are many books
where this is explained; I happen to know "A First Course in
Combinatorial Optimization" by Jon Lee, see Chapters 6 and 7.  

David


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