Title
A Sequential Importance Sampling Algorithm for Counting Linear Extensions
Abstract
AbstractIn recent decades, a number of profound theorems concerning approximation of hard counting problems have appeared. These include estimation of the permanent, estimating the volume of a convex polyhedron, and counting (approximately) the number of linear extensions of a partially ordered set. All of these results have been achieved using probabilistic sampling methods, specifically Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) techniques. In each case, a rapidly mixing Markov chain is defined that is guaranteed to produce, with high probability, an accurate result after only a polynomial number of operations.Although of polynomial complexity, none of these results lead to a practical computational technique, nor do they claim to. The polynomials are of high degree and a non-trivial amount of computing is required to get even a single sample. Our aim in this article is to present practical Monte Carlo methods for one of these problems, counting linear extensions. Like related work on estimating the coefficients of the reliability polynomial, our technique is based on improving the so-called Knuth counting algorithm by incorporating an importance function into the node selection technique giving a sequential importance sampling (SIS) method. We define and report performance on two importance functions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3385650
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics
DocType
Volume
Issue
Journal
25
1
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1084-6654
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Beichl, Isabel16322.58
Alathea Jensen200.34
Francis Sullivan34917.33