Approximating Subset Sum Ratio via Partition Computations

Abstract

We present a new FPTAS for the Subset Sum Ratio problem, which, given a set of integers, asks for two disjoint subsets such that the ratio of their sums is as close to $1$ as possible. Our scheme makes use of exact and approximate algorithms for the closely related Partition problem, hence any progress over those -- such as the recent improvement due to Bringmann and Nakos [SODA 2021] -- carries over to our FPTAS. Depending on the relationship between the size of the input set $n$ and the error margin $\varepsilon$, we improve upon the best currently known algorithm of Melissinos and Pagourtzis [COCOON 2018] of complexity $O(n^4 / \varepsilon)$. In particular, the exponent of $n$ in our proposed scheme may decrease down to $2$, depending on the Partition algorithm used. Furthermore, while the aforementioned state of the art complexity, expressed in the form $O((n + 1 / \varepsilon)^c)$, has constant $c = 5$, our results establish that $c < 5$.