A Local-Ratio Theorem for Approximating the Weighted Vertex Cover Problem

A local-ratio theorem for approximating the weighted vertex cover problem is presented. It consists of reducing the weights of vertices in certain subgraphs and has the effect of local-approximation. Putting together the Nemhauser-Trotter local optimization algorithm and the local-ratio theorem yields several new approximation techniques which improve known results from time complexity, simplicity and performance-ratio point of view. The main approximation algorithm guarantees a ratio of where K is the smallest integer s.t. † This is an improvement over the currently known ratios, especially for a “practical” number of vertices (e.g. for graphs which have less than 2400, 60000, 10 12 vertices the ratio is bounded by 1.75, 1.8, 1.9 respectively).