Graph Products Revisited: Tight Approximation Hardness of Induced Matching, Poset Dimension and More
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Graph product is a fundamental tool with rich applications in both graph theory and theoretical computer science. It is usually studied in the form f(G * H) where G and H are graphs, * is a graph product and f is a graph property. For example, if f is the independence number and * is the disjunctive product, then the product is known to be multiplicative: f(G * H) = f(G)f(H). In this paper, we study graph products in the following non-standard form: f((G⊕H)*J) where G, H and J are graphs, ⊕ and * are two different graph products and f is a graph property. We show that if f is the induced and semi-induced matching number, then for some products ⊕ and *, it is subadditive in the sense that f((G ⊕ H) * J) ≤ f(G * J) + f(H * J). Moreover, when f is the poset dimension number, it is almost subadditive. As applications of this result (we only need J = K2 here), we obtain tight hardness of approximation for various problems in discrete mathematics and computer science: bipartite induced and semi-induced matching (a.k.a. maximum expanding sequences), poset dimension, maximum feasible subsystem with 0/1 coefficients, unit-demand min-buying and single-minded pricing, donation center location, boxicity, cubicity threshold dimension and independent packing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".