{"title":"Tropical convexity in location problems","authors":"Andrei Comăneci","doi":"10.1007/s00186-024-00869-w","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We investigate location problems where the optimal solution is found within the tropical convex hull of the given input points. Our initial focus is on geodesically star-convex sets, using the asymmetric tropical distance. We introduce the concept of tropically quasiconvex functions, which have sub-level sets with this shape, and are closely related to monotonic functions. Our findings demonstrate that location problems using tropically quasiconvex functions as distance measures will result in an optimal solution within the tropical convex hull of the input points. We also extend this result to cases where the input points are replaced with tropically convex sets. Finally, we explore the applications of our research in phylogenetics, highlighting the properties of consensus methods that arise from our class of location problems.</p>","PeriodicalId":49862,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Methods of Operations Research","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mathematical Methods of Operations Research","FirstCategoryId":"100","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00186-024-00869-w","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"数学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MATHEMATICS, APPLIED","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate location problems where the optimal solution is found within the tropical convex hull of the given input points. Our initial focus is on geodesically star-convex sets, using the asymmetric tropical distance. We introduce the concept of tropically quasiconvex functions, which have sub-level sets with this shape, and are closely related to monotonic functions. Our findings demonstrate that location problems using tropically quasiconvex functions as distance measures will result in an optimal solution within the tropical convex hull of the input points. We also extend this result to cases where the input points are replaced with tropically convex sets. Finally, we explore the applications of our research in phylogenetics, highlighting the properties of consensus methods that arise from our class of location problems.
期刊介绍:
This peer reviewed journal publishes original and high-quality articles on important mathematical and computational aspects of operations research, in particular in the areas of continuous and discrete mathematical optimization, stochastics, and game theory. Theoretically oriented papers are supposed to include explicit motivations of assumptions and results, while application oriented papers need to contain substantial mathematical contributions. Suggestions for algorithms should be accompanied with numerical evidence for their superiority over state-of-the-art methods. Articles must be of interest for a large audience in operations research, written in clear and correct English, and typeset in LaTeX. A special section contains invited tutorial papers on advanced mathematical or computational aspects of operations research, aiming at making such methodologies accessible for a wider audience.
All papers are refereed. The emphasis is on originality, quality, and importance.