35-3 Weighted set-covering problem

Suppose that we generalize the set-covering problem so that each set SiS_i in the family F\mathcal F has an associated weight wiw_i and the weight of a cover C\mathcal C is โˆ‘SiโˆˆCwi\sum_{S_i \in \mathcal C} w_i. We wish to determine a minimum-weight cover. (Section 35.3 handles the case in which wi=1w_i = 1 for all ii.)

Show how to generalize the greedy set-covering heuristic in a natural manner to provide an approximate solution for any instance of the weighted set-covering problem. Show that your heuristic has an approximation ratio of H(d)H(d), where dd is the maximum size of any set SiS_i.

(Omit!)