Partial resampling to approximate covering integer programs

We consider column-sparse covering integer programs, a generalization of set cover, which have a long line of research of (randomized) approximation algorithms. We develop a new rounding scheme based on the Partial Resampling variant of the Lovász Local Lemma developed by Harris & Srinivasan (2019). This achieves an approximation ratio of $1 + \frac{\ln (Δ_1+1)}{a_{\min}} + O\Big( \log(1 + \sqrt{ \frac{\log (Δ_1+1)}{a_{\min}}} \Big)$, where $a_{\min}$ is the minimum covering constraint and $Δ_1$ is the maximum $\ell_1$-norm of any column of the covering matrix (whose entries are scaled to lie in $[0,1]$). When there are additional constraints on the variable sizes, we show an approximation ratio of $\ln Δ_0 + O(\log \log Δ_0)$ (where $Δ_0$ is the maximum number of non-zero entries in any column of the covering matrix). These results improve asymptotically, in several different ways, over results of Srinivasan (2006) and Kolliopoulos & Young (2005). We show nearly-matching inapproximability and integrality-gap lower bounds. We also show that the rounding process leads to negative correlation among the variables, which allows us to handle multi-criteria programs.