On Friedmann’s Subexponential Lower Bound for Zadeh’s Pivot Rule

Abstract

The question whether the Simplex method admits a polynomial time pivot rule remains one of the most important open questions in discrete optimization. Zadeh’s pivot rule had long been a promising candidate, before Friedmann (IPCO, 2011) presented a subexponential instance, based on a close relation to policy iteration algorithms for Markov decision processes (MDPs). We investigate Friedmann’s lower bound construction and exhibit three flaws in his analysis: We show that (a) the initial policy for the policy iteration does not produce the required occurrence records and improving switches, (b) the specification of occurrence records is not entirely accurate, and (c) the sequence of improving switches described by Friedmann does not consistently follow Zadeh’s pivot rule. In this paper, we resolve each of these issues. While the first two issues require only minor changes to the specifications of the initial policy and the occurrence records, the third issue requires a significantly more sophisticated ordering and associated tie-breaking rule that are in accordance with the Least-Entered pivot rule. Most importantly, our changes do not affect the macroscopic structure of Friedmann’s MDP, and thus we are able to retain his original result.