Bridging gap between standard and differential polynomial approxiamtion: the case of bin-packing

International audienceThe purpose of this paper is to mainly prove the following theorem: for every polynomial time algorithm running in time T(n) and guaranteeing standard-approximation ratio p for bin-packing, there exists an algorithm running in time O(nT(n)) and achieving differential-approximation ratio 2 - p for BP. This theorem has two main impacts. The first one is operational, deriving a polynomial time differential-approximation schema for bin-packing. The second one is structural, establishing a kind of reduction (to our knowledge not existing until now) between standard approximation and differential one