Probabilistic analysis of the minimum weighted flowtime scheduling problem

  • Authors:
  • Alberto Marchetti Spaccamela;Wan Soo Rhee;Leen Stougie;Sara Van De Geer

  • Affiliations:
  • Universita di L'Aquila, Italy;Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA;University of Amsterdam, Netherlands;Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam, Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Operations Research Letters
  • Year:
  • 1992

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Abstract

The minimum weighted flow time scheduling problem is studied from a probabilistic point of view. A probability distribution is specified over its problem instances, and the asymptotics of the optimal solution value are derived. Rewriting this value as a U-statistic perturbed by a small term allows us to use results from the well-established theory on these statistics. We derive a law of large numbers, a law of the iterated logarithm and a central limit theorem. As a byproduct we obtain a proof of asymptotic optimality almost surely of a greedy heuristic (the shortest weighted processing time first rule) for the solution of the NP-complete problem with more than one machine.