Attempting the Impossible: Enumerating Extremal Submodular Functions for n = 6

Elod P. Csirmaz and Laszlo Csirmaz ()
Additional contact information
Elod P. Csirmaz: Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, 1053 Budapest, Hungary
Laszlo Csirmaz: Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, 1053 Budapest, Hungary

Mathematics, 2024, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: 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 1000 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.

Keywords: vertex enumeration; double description method; submodular functions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/13/1/97/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/13/1/97/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:13:y:2024:i:1:p:97-:d:1555990

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().