Bicriteria Submodular Maximization

Abstract: Submodular functions and their optimization have found applications in diverse settings ranging from machine learning and data mining to game theory and economics. In this work, we consider the constrained maximization of a submodular function, for which we conduct a principled study of bicriteria approximation algorithms -- algorithms which can violate the constraint, but only up to a bounded factor. Bicrteria optimization allows constrained submodular maximization to capture additional important settings, such as the well-studied submodular cover problem and optimization under soft constraints. We provide results that span both multiple types of constraints (cardinality, knapsack, matroid and convex set) and multiple classes of submodular functions (monotone, symmetric and general). For many of the cases considered, we provide optimal results. In other cases, our results improve over the state-of-the-art, sometimes even over the state-of-the-art for the special case of single-criterion (standard) optimization. Results of the last kind demonstrate that relaxing the feasibility constraint may give a perspective about the problem that is useful even if one only desires feasible solutions.