M. Abolhassani, S. Ehsani, Hossein Esfandiari, M. Hajiaghayi, Robert D. Kleinberg, Brendan Lucier
Hill and Kertz studied the prophet inequality on iid distributions [The Annals of Probability 1982]. They proved a theoretical bound of 1 - 1/e on the approximation factor of their algorithm. They conjectured that the best approximation factor for arbitrarily large n is 1/1+1/e ≃ 0.731. This conjecture remained open prior to this paper for over 30 years. In this paper we present a threshold-based algorithm for the prophet inequality with n iid distributions. Using a nontrivial and novel approach we show that our algorithm is a 0.738-approximation algorithm. By beating the bound of 1/1+1/e, this refutes the conjecture of Hill and Kertz. Moreover, we generalize our results to non-uniform distributions and discuss its applications in mechanism design.
Hill和Kertz研究了iid分布上的先知不等式[the Annals of Probability 1982]。他们证明了他们的算法的近似因子的理论边界为1 - 1/e。他们推测任意大n的最佳近似因子是1/1+1/e≃0.731。在这篇论文发表之前,这个猜想已经存在了30多年。本文提出了一种基于阈值的n - id分布的预测不等式算法。使用一种非平凡的新颖方法,我们证明了我们的算法是0.738近似算法。通过突破1/1+1/e的界限,反驳了Hill和Kertz的猜想。此外,我们将结果推广到非均匀分布,并讨论了其在机构设计中的应用。
{"title":"Beating 1-1/e for ordered prophets","authors":"M. Abolhassani, S. Ehsani, Hossein Esfandiari, M. Hajiaghayi, Robert D. Kleinberg, Brendan Lucier","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055479","url":null,"abstract":"Hill and Kertz studied the prophet inequality on iid distributions [The Annals of Probability 1982]. They proved a theoretical bound of 1 - 1/e on the approximation factor of their algorithm. They conjectured that the best approximation factor for arbitrarily large n is 1/1+1/e ≃ 0.731. This conjecture remained open prior to this paper for over 30 years. In this paper we present a threshold-based algorithm for the prophet inequality with n iid distributions. Using a nontrivial and novel approach we show that our algorithm is a 0.738-approximation algorithm. By beating the bound of 1/1+1/e, this refutes the conjecture of Hill and Kertz. Moreover, we generalize our results to non-uniform distributions and discuss its applications in mechanism design.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77872599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shuchi Chawla, Nikhil R. Devanur, A. Holroyd, Anna R. Karlin, James B. Martin, Balasubramanian Sivan
We consider time-of-use pricing as a technique for matching supply and demand of temporal resources with the goal of maximizing social welfare. Relevant examples include energy, computing resources on a cloud computing platform, and charging stations for electric vehicles, among many others. A client/job in this setting has a window of time during which he needs service, and a particular value for obtaining it. We assume a stochastic model for demand, where each job materializes with some probability via an independent Bernoulli trial. Given a per-time-unit pricing of resources, any realized job will first try to get served by the cheapest available resource in its window and, failing that, will try to find service at the next cheapest available resource, and so on. Thus, the natural stochastic fluctuations in demand have the potential to lead to cascading overload events. Our main result shows that setting prices so as to optimally handle the expected demand works well: with high probability, when the actual demand is instantiated, the system is stable and the expected value of the jobs served is very close to that of the optimal offline algorithm.
{"title":"Stability of service under time-of-use pricing","authors":"Shuchi Chawla, Nikhil R. Devanur, A. Holroyd, Anna R. Karlin, James B. Martin, Balasubramanian Sivan","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055455","url":null,"abstract":"We consider time-of-use pricing as a technique for matching supply and demand of temporal resources with the goal of maximizing social welfare. Relevant examples include energy, computing resources on a cloud computing platform, and charging stations for electric vehicles, among many others. A client/job in this setting has a window of time during which he needs service, and a particular value for obtaining it. We assume a stochastic model for demand, where each job materializes with some probability via an independent Bernoulli trial. Given a per-time-unit pricing of resources, any realized job will first try to get served by the cheapest available resource in its window and, failing that, will try to find service at the next cheapest available resource, and so on. Thus, the natural stochastic fluctuations in demand have the potential to lead to cascading overload events. Our main result shows that setting prices so as to optimally handle the expected demand works well: with high probability, when the actual demand is instantiated, the system is stable and the expected value of the jobs served is very close to that of the optimal offline algorithm.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84625702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We prove that the integrality gap of the Goemans-Linial semidefinite programming relaxation for the Sparsest Cut Problem is Ω(√logn) on inputs with n vertices, thus matching the previously best known upper bound (logn)1/2+o(1) up to lower-order factors. This statement is a consequence of the following new isoperimetric-type inequality. Consider the 8-regular graph whose vertex set is the 5-dimensional integer grid ℤ5 and where each vertex (a,b,c,d,e)∈ ℤ5 is connected to the 8 vertices (a± 1,b,c,d,e), (a,b± 1,c,d,e), (a,b,c± 1,d,e± a), (a,b,c,d± 1,e± b). This graph is known as the Cayley graph of the 5-dimensional discrete Heisenberg group. Given Ω⊆ ℤ5, denote the size of its edge boundary in this graph (a.k.a. the horizontal perimeter of Ω) by |∂hΩ|. For t ϵ ℕ, denote by |∂vtΩ| the number of (a,b,c,d,e)ϵ ℤ5 such that exactly one of the two vectors (a,b,c,d,e),(a,b,c,d,e+t) is in Ω. The vertical perimeter of Ω is defined to be |∂vΩ|= √Σt=1∞|∂vtΩ|2/t2. We show that every subset Ω⊆ ℤ5 satisfies |∂vΩ|=O(|∂hΩ|). This vertical-versus-horizontal isoperimetric inequality yields the above-stated integrality gap for Sparsest Cut and answers several geometric and analytic questions of independent interest. The theorem stated above is the culmination of a program whose aim is to understand the performance of the Goemans-Linial semidefinite program through the embeddability properties of Heisenberg groups. These investigations have mathematical significance even beyond their established relevance to approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization. In particular they contribute to a range of mathematical disciplines including functional analysis, geometric group theory, harmonic analysis, sub-Riemannian geometry, geometric measure theory, ergodic theory, group representations, and metric differentiation. This article builds on the above cited works, with the "twist" that while those works were equally valid for any finite dimensional Heisenberg group, our result holds for the Heisenberg group of dimension 5 (or higher) but fails for the 3-dimensional Heisenberg group. This insight leads to our core contribution, which is a deduction of an endpoint L1-boundedness of a certain singular integral on ℝ5 from the (local) L2-boundedness of the corresponding singular integral on ℝ3. To do this, we devise a corona-type decomposition of subsets of a Heisenberg group, in the spirit of the construction that David and Semmes performed in ℝn, but with two main conceptual differences (in addition to more technical differences that arise from the peculiarities of the geometry of Heisenberg group). Firstly, the "atoms" of our decomposition are perturbations of intrinsic Lipschitz graphs in the sense of Franchi, Serapioni, and Serra Cassano (plus the requisite "wild" regions that satisfy a Carleson packing condition). Secondly, we control the local overlap of our corona decomposition by using quantitative monotonicity rather than Jones-type β-numbers.
{"title":"The integrality gap of the Goemans-Linial SDP relaxation for sparsest cut is at least a constant multiple of √log n","authors":"A. Naor, Robert Young","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055413","url":null,"abstract":"We prove that the integrality gap of the Goemans-Linial semidefinite programming relaxation for the Sparsest Cut Problem is Ω(√logn) on inputs with n vertices, thus matching the previously best known upper bound (logn)1/2+o(1) up to lower-order factors. This statement is a consequence of the following new isoperimetric-type inequality. Consider the 8-regular graph whose vertex set is the 5-dimensional integer grid ℤ5 and where each vertex (a,b,c,d,e)∈ ℤ5 is connected to the 8 vertices (a± 1,b,c,d,e), (a,b± 1,c,d,e), (a,b,c± 1,d,e± a), (a,b,c,d± 1,e± b). This graph is known as the Cayley graph of the 5-dimensional discrete Heisenberg group. Given Ω⊆ ℤ5, denote the size of its edge boundary in this graph (a.k.a. the horizontal perimeter of Ω) by |∂hΩ|. For t ϵ ℕ, denote by |∂vtΩ| the number of (a,b,c,d,e)ϵ ℤ5 such that exactly one of the two vectors (a,b,c,d,e),(a,b,c,d,e+t) is in Ω. The vertical perimeter of Ω is defined to be |∂vΩ|= √Σt=1∞|∂vtΩ|2/t2. We show that every subset Ω⊆ ℤ5 satisfies |∂vΩ|=O(|∂hΩ|). This vertical-versus-horizontal isoperimetric inequality yields the above-stated integrality gap for Sparsest Cut and answers several geometric and analytic questions of independent interest. The theorem stated above is the culmination of a program whose aim is to understand the performance of the Goemans-Linial semidefinite program through the embeddability properties of Heisenberg groups. These investigations have mathematical significance even beyond their established relevance to approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization. In particular they contribute to a range of mathematical disciplines including functional analysis, geometric group theory, harmonic analysis, sub-Riemannian geometry, geometric measure theory, ergodic theory, group representations, and metric differentiation. This article builds on the above cited works, with the \"twist\" that while those works were equally valid for any finite dimensional Heisenberg group, our result holds for the Heisenberg group of dimension 5 (or higher) but fails for the 3-dimensional Heisenberg group. This insight leads to our core contribution, which is a deduction of an endpoint L1-boundedness of a certain singular integral on ℝ5 from the (local) L2-boundedness of the corresponding singular integral on ℝ3. To do this, we devise a corona-type decomposition of subsets of a Heisenberg group, in the spirit of the construction that David and Semmes performed in ℝn, but with two main conceptual differences (in addition to more technical differences that arise from the peculiarities of the geometry of Heisenberg group). Firstly, the \"atoms\" of our decomposition are perturbations of intrinsic Lipschitz graphs in the sense of Franchi, Serapioni, and Serra Cassano (plus the requisite \"wild\" regions that satisfy a Carleson packing condition). Secondly, we control the local overlap of our corona decomposition by using quantitative monotonicity rather than Jones-type β-numbers.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91368464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We introduce synchronization strings, which provide a novel way of efficiently dealing with synchronization errors, i.e., insertions and deletions. Synchronization errors are strictly more general and much harder to deal with than more commonly considered half-errors, i.e., symbol corruptions and erasures. For every ε > 0, synchronization strings allow to index a sequence with an ε-O(1) size alphabet such that one can efficiently transform k synchronization errors into (1 + ε)k half-errors. This powerful new technique has many applications. In this paper we focus on designing insdel codes, i.e., error correcting block codes (ECCs) for insertion deletion channels. While ECCs for both half-errors and synchronization errors have been intensely studied, the later has largely resisted progress. As Mitzenmacher puts it in his 2009 survey: "Channels with synchronization errors ... are simply not adequately understood by current theory. Given the near-complete knowledge we have for channels with erasures and errors ... our lack of understanding about channels with synchronization errors is truly remarkable." Indeed, it took until 1999 for the first insdel codes with constant rate, constant distance, and constant alphabet size to be constructed and only since 2016 are there constructions of constant rate indel codes for asymptotically large noise rates. Even in the asymptotically large or small noise regime these codes are polynomially far from the optimal rate-distance tradeoff. This makes the understanding of insdel codes up to this work equivalent to what was known for regular ECCs after Forney introduced concatenated codes in his doctoral thesis 50 years ago. A straight forward application of our synchronization strings based indexing method gives a simple black-box construction which transforms any ECC into an equally efficient insdel code with only a small increase in the alphabet size. This instantly transfers much of the highly developed understanding for regular ECCs over large constant alphabets into the realm of insdel codes. Most notably, for the complete noise spectrum we obtain efficient "near-MDS" insdel codes which get arbitrarily close to the optimal rate-distance tradeoff given by the Singleton bound. In particular, for any δ ∈ (0,1) and ε > 0 we give insdel codes achieving a rate of 1 - ξ - ε over a constant size alphabet that efficiently correct a δ fraction of insertions or deletions.
{"title":"Synchronization strings: codes for insertions and deletions approaching the Singleton bound","authors":"Bernhard Haeupler, Amirbehshad Shahrasbi","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055498","url":null,"abstract":"We introduce synchronization strings, which provide a novel way of efficiently dealing with synchronization errors, i.e., insertions and deletions. Synchronization errors are strictly more general and much harder to deal with than more commonly considered half-errors, i.e., symbol corruptions and erasures. For every ε > 0, synchronization strings allow to index a sequence with an ε-O(1) size alphabet such that one can efficiently transform k synchronization errors into (1 + ε)k half-errors. This powerful new technique has many applications. In this paper we focus on designing insdel codes, i.e., error correcting block codes (ECCs) for insertion deletion channels. While ECCs for both half-errors and synchronization errors have been intensely studied, the later has largely resisted progress. As Mitzenmacher puts it in his 2009 survey: \"Channels with synchronization errors ... are simply not adequately understood by current theory. Given the near-complete knowledge we have for channels with erasures and errors ... our lack of understanding about channels with synchronization errors is truly remarkable.\" Indeed, it took until 1999 for the first insdel codes with constant rate, constant distance, and constant alphabet size to be constructed and only since 2016 are there constructions of constant rate indel codes for asymptotically large noise rates. Even in the asymptotically large or small noise regime these codes are polynomially far from the optimal rate-distance tradeoff. This makes the understanding of insdel codes up to this work equivalent to what was known for regular ECCs after Forney introduced concatenated codes in his doctoral thesis 50 years ago. A straight forward application of our synchronization strings based indexing method gives a simple black-box construction which transforms any ECC into an equally efficient insdel code with only a small increase in the alphabet size. This instantly transfers much of the highly developed understanding for regular ECCs over large constant alphabets into the realm of insdel codes. Most notably, for the complete noise spectrum we obtain efficient \"near-MDS\" insdel codes which get arbitrarily close to the optimal rate-distance tradeoff given by the Singleton bound. In particular, for any δ ∈ (0,1) and ε > 0 we give insdel codes achieving a rate of 1 - ξ - ε over a constant size alphabet that efficiently correct a δ fraction of insertions or deletions.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77366401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We study complexity of short sentences in Presburger arithmetic (Short-PA). Here by “short” we mean sentences with a bounded number of variables, quantifers, inequalities and Boolean operations; the input consists only of the integers involved in the inequalities. We prove that assuming Kannan’s partition can be found in polynomial time, the satisfability of Short-PA sentences can be decided in polynomial time. Furthermore, under the same assumption, we show that the numbers of satisfying assignments of short Presburger sentences can also be computed in polynomial time.
{"title":"Complexity of short Presburger arithmetic","authors":"Danny Nguyen, I. Pak","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055435","url":null,"abstract":"We study complexity of short sentences in Presburger arithmetic (Short-PA). Here by “short” we mean sentences with a bounded number of variables, quantifers, inequalities and Boolean operations; the input consists only of the integers involved in the inequalities. We prove that assuming Kannan’s partition can be found in polynomial time, the satisfability of Short-PA sentences can be decided in polynomial time. Furthermore, under the same assumption, we show that the numbers of satisfying assignments of short Presburger sentences can also be computed in polynomial time.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77737929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Finding cycles in graphs is a fundamental problem in algorithmic graph theory. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding and reporting a cycle of length 2k in an undirected graph G with n nodes and m edges for constant k≥ 2. A classic result by Bondy and Simonovits [J. Combinatorial Theory, 1974] implies that if m ≥ 100k n1+1/k, then G contains a 2k-cycle, further implying that one needs to consider only graphs with m = O(n1+1/k). Previously the best known algorithms were an O(n2) algorithm due to Yuster and Zwick [J. Discrete Math 1997] as well as a O(m2-(1+⌈ k/2 ⌉-1)/(k+1)) algorithm by Alon et. al. [Algorithmica 1997]. We present an algorithm that uses O( m2k/(k+1) ) time and finds a 2k-cycle if one exists. This bound is O(n2) exactly when m = Θ(n1+1/k). When finding 4-cycles our new bound coincides with Alon et. al., while for every k>2 our new bound yields a polynomial improvement in m. Yuster and Zwick noted that it is "plausible to conjecture that O(n2) is the best possible bound in terms of n". We show "conditional optimality": if this hypothesis holds then our O(m2k/(k+1)) algorithm is tight as well. Furthermore, a folklore reduction implies that no combinatorial algorithm can determine if a graph contains a 6-cycle in time O(m3/2-ε) for any ε>0 unless boolean matrix multiplication can be solved combinatorially in time O(n3-ε′) for some ε′ > 0, which is widely believed to be false. Coupled with our main result, this gives tight bounds for finding 6-cycles combinatorially and also separates the complexity of finding 4- and 6-cycles giving evidence that the exponent of m in the running time should indeed increase with k. The key ingredient in our algorithm is a new notion of capped k-walks, which are walks of length k that visit only nodes according to a fixed ordering. Our main technical contribution is an involved analysis proving several properties of such walks which may be of independent interest.
{"title":"Finding even cycles faster via capped k-walks","authors":"Søren Dahlgaard, M. B. T. Knudsen, Morten Stöckel","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055459","url":null,"abstract":"Finding cycles in graphs is a fundamental problem in algorithmic graph theory. In this paper, we consider the problem of finding and reporting a cycle of length 2k in an undirected graph G with n nodes and m edges for constant k≥ 2. A classic result by Bondy and Simonovits [J. Combinatorial Theory, 1974] implies that if m ≥ 100k n1+1/k, then G contains a 2k-cycle, further implying that one needs to consider only graphs with m = O(n1+1/k). Previously the best known algorithms were an O(n2) algorithm due to Yuster and Zwick [J. Discrete Math 1997] as well as a O(m2-(1+⌈ k/2 ⌉-1)/(k+1)) algorithm by Alon et. al. [Algorithmica 1997]. We present an algorithm that uses O( m2k/(k+1) ) time and finds a 2k-cycle if one exists. This bound is O(n2) exactly when m = Θ(n1+1/k). When finding 4-cycles our new bound coincides with Alon et. al., while for every k>2 our new bound yields a polynomial improvement in m. Yuster and Zwick noted that it is \"plausible to conjecture that O(n2) is the best possible bound in terms of n\". We show \"conditional optimality\": if this hypothesis holds then our O(m2k/(k+1)) algorithm is tight as well. Furthermore, a folklore reduction implies that no combinatorial algorithm can determine if a graph contains a 6-cycle in time O(m3/2-ε) for any ε>0 unless boolean matrix multiplication can be solved combinatorially in time O(n3-ε′) for some ε′ > 0, which is widely believed to be false. Coupled with our main result, this gives tight bounds for finding 6-cycles combinatorially and also separates the complexity of finding 4- and 6-cycles giving evidence that the exponent of m in the running time should indeed increase with k. The key ingredient in our algorithm is a new notion of capped k-walks, which are walks of length k that visit only nodes according to a fixed ordering. Our main technical contribution is an involved analysis proving several properties of such walks which may be of independent interest.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84319517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The distributed single-source shortest paths problem is one of the most fundamental and central problems in the message-passing distributed computing. Classical Bellman-Ford algorithm solves it in O(n) time, where n is the number of vertices in the input graph G. Peleg and Rubinovich, FOCS'99, showed a lower bound of Ω(D + √n) for this problem, where D is the hop-diameter of G. Whether or not this problem can be solved in o(n) time when D is relatively small is a major notorious open question. Despite intensive research that yielded near-optimal algorithms for the approximate variant of this problem, no progress was reported for the original problem. In this paper we answer this question in the affirmative. We devise an algorithm that requires O((n logn)5/6) time, for D = O(√n logn), and O(D1/3 #183; (n logn)2/3) time, for larger D. This running time is sublinear in n in almost the entire range of parameters, specifically, for D = o(n/log2 n). We also generalize our result in two directions. One is when edges have bandwidth b ≥ 1, and the other is the s-sources shortest paths problem. For the former problem, our algorithm provides an improved bound, compared to the unit-bandwidth case. In particular, we provide an all-pairs shortest paths algorithm that requires O(n5/3 #183; log2/3 n) time, even for b = 1, for all values of D. For the latter problem (of s sources), our algorithm also provides bounds that improve upon the previous state-of-the-art in the entire range of parameters. From the technical viewpoint, our algorithm computes a hopset G″ of a skeleton graph G′ of G without first computing G′ itself. We then conduct a Bellman-Ford exploration in G′ ∪ G″, while computing the required edges of G′ on the fly. As a result, our algorithm computes exactly those edges of G′ that it really needs, rather than computing approximately the entire G′.
{"title":"Distributed exact shortest paths in sublinear time","authors":"Michael Elkin","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055452","url":null,"abstract":"The distributed single-source shortest paths problem is one of the most fundamental and central problems in the message-passing distributed computing. Classical Bellman-Ford algorithm solves it in O(n) time, where n is the number of vertices in the input graph G. Peleg and Rubinovich, FOCS'99, showed a lower bound of Ω(D + √n) for this problem, where D is the hop-diameter of G. Whether or not this problem can be solved in o(n) time when D is relatively small is a major notorious open question. Despite intensive research that yielded near-optimal algorithms for the approximate variant of this problem, no progress was reported for the original problem. In this paper we answer this question in the affirmative. We devise an algorithm that requires O((n logn)5/6) time, for D = O(√n logn), and O(D1/3 #183; (n logn)2/3) time, for larger D. This running time is sublinear in n in almost the entire range of parameters, specifically, for D = o(n/log2 n). We also generalize our result in two directions. One is when edges have bandwidth b ≥ 1, and the other is the s-sources shortest paths problem. For the former problem, our algorithm provides an improved bound, compared to the unit-bandwidth case. In particular, we provide an all-pairs shortest paths algorithm that requires O(n5/3 #183; log2/3 n) time, even for b = 1, for all values of D. For the latter problem (of s sources), our algorithm also provides bounds that improve upon the previous state-of-the-art in the entire range of parameters. From the technical viewpoint, our algorithm computes a hopset G″ of a skeleton graph G′ of G without first computing G′ itself. We then conduct a Bellman-Ford exploration in G′ ∪ G″, while computing the required edges of G′ on the fly. As a result, our algorithm computes exactly those edges of G′ that it really needs, rather than computing approximately the entire G′.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80919630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For any undirected and weighted graph G=(V,E,w) with n vertices and m edges, we call a sparse subgraph H of G, with proper reweighting of the edges, a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier if (1-ε)xTLGx≤xT LH x≤(1+ε)xTLGx holds for any xΕℝn, where LG and LH are the respective Laplacian matrices of G and H. Noticing that Ω(m) time is needed for any algorithm to construct a spectral sparsifier and a spectral sparsifier of G requires Ω(n) edges, a natural question is to investigate, for any constant ε, if a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier of G with O(n) edges can be constructed in Ο(m) time, where the Ο notation suppresses polylogarithmic factors. All previous constructions on spectral sparsification require either super-linear number of edges or m1+Ω(1) time. In this work we answer this question affirmatively by presenting an algorithm that, for any undirected graph G and ε>0, outputs a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier of G with O(n/ε2) edges in Ο(m/εO(1)) time. Our algorithm is based on three novel techniques: (1) a new potential function which is much easier to compute yet has similar guarantees as the potential functions used in previous references; (2) an efficient reduction from a two-sided spectral sparsifier to a one-sided spectral sparsifier; (3) constructing a one-sided spectral sparsifier by a semi-definite program.
{"title":"An SDP-based algorithm for linear-sized spectral sparsification","authors":"Y. Lee, He Sun","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055477","url":null,"abstract":"For any undirected and weighted graph G=(V,E,w) with n vertices and m edges, we call a sparse subgraph H of G, with proper reweighting of the edges, a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier if (1-ε)xTLGx≤xT LH x≤(1+ε)xTLGx holds for any xΕℝn, where LG and LH are the respective Laplacian matrices of G and H. Noticing that Ω(m) time is needed for any algorithm to construct a spectral sparsifier and a spectral sparsifier of G requires Ω(n) edges, a natural question is to investigate, for any constant ε, if a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier of G with O(n) edges can be constructed in Ο(m) time, where the Ο notation suppresses polylogarithmic factors. All previous constructions on spectral sparsification require either super-linear number of edges or m1+Ω(1) time. In this work we answer this question affirmatively by presenting an algorithm that, for any undirected graph G and ε>0, outputs a (1+ε)-spectral sparsifier of G with O(n/ε2) edges in Ο(m/εO(1)) time. Our algorithm is based on three novel techniques: (1) a new potential function which is much easier to compute yet has similar guarantees as the potential functions used in previous references; (2) an efficient reduction from a two-sided spectral sparsifier to a one-sided spectral sparsifier; (3) constructing a one-sided spectral sparsifier by a semi-definite program.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74655839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We prove a lower bound of Ω(n1/3) for the query complexity of any two-sided and adaptive algorithm that tests whether an unknown Boolean function f:{0,1}n→ {0,1} is monotone versus far from monotone. This improves the recent lower bound of Ω(n1/4) for the same problem by Belovs and Blais (STOC'16). Our result builds on a new family of random Boolean functions that can be viewed as a two-level extension of Talagrand's random DNFs. Beyond monotonicity we prove a lower bound of Ω(√n) for two-sided, adaptive algorithms and a lower bound of Ω(n) for one-sided, non-adaptive algorithms for testing unateness, a natural generalization of monotonicity. The latter matches the linear upper bounds by Khot and Shinkar (RANDOM'16) and by Baleshzar, Chakrabarty, Pallavoor, Raskhodnikova, and Seshadhri (2017).
{"title":"Beyond Talagrand functions: new lower bounds for testing monotonicity and unateness","authors":"Xi Chen, Erik Waingarten, Jinyu Xie","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055461","url":null,"abstract":"We prove a lower bound of Ω(n1/3) for the query complexity of any two-sided and adaptive algorithm that tests whether an unknown Boolean function f:{0,1}n→ {0,1} is monotone versus far from monotone. This improves the recent lower bound of Ω(n1/4) for the same problem by Belovs and Blais (STOC'16). Our result builds on a new family of random Boolean functions that can be viewed as a two-level extension of Talagrand's random DNFs. Beyond monotonicity we prove a lower bound of Ω(√n) for two-sided, adaptive algorithms and a lower bound of Ω(n) for one-sided, non-adaptive algorithms for testing unateness, a natural generalization of monotonicity. The latter matches the linear upper bounds by Khot and Shinkar (RANDOM'16) and by Baleshzar, Chakrabarty, Pallavoor, Raskhodnikova, and Seshadhri (2017).","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"410 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84880654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A polynomial pΕℝ[z1,…,zn] is real stable if it has no roots in the upper-half complex plane. Gurvits's permanent inequality gives a lower bound on the coefficient of the z1z2…zn monomial of a real stable polynomial p with nonnegative coefficients. This fundamental inequality has been used to attack several counting and optimization problems. Here, we study a more general question: Given a stable multilinear polynomial p with nonnegative coefficients and a set of monomials S, we show that if the polynomial obtained by summing up all monomials in S is real stable, then we can lower bound the sum of coefficients of monomials of p that are in S. We also prove generalizations of this theorem to (real stable) polynomials that are not multilinear. We use our theorem to give a new proof of Schrijver's inequality on the number of perfect matchings of a regular bipartite graph, generalize a recent result of Nikolov and Singh, and give deterministic polynomial time approximation algorithms for several counting problems.
{"title":"A generalization of permanent inequalities and applications in counting and optimization","authors":"Nima Anari, S. Gharan","doi":"10.1145/3055399.3055469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3055399.3055469","url":null,"abstract":"A polynomial pΕℝ[z1,…,zn] is real stable if it has no roots in the upper-half complex plane. Gurvits's permanent inequality gives a lower bound on the coefficient of the z1z2…zn monomial of a real stable polynomial p with nonnegative coefficients. This fundamental inequality has been used to attack several counting and optimization problems. Here, we study a more general question: Given a stable multilinear polynomial p with nonnegative coefficients and a set of monomials S, we show that if the polynomial obtained by summing up all monomials in S is real stable, then we can lower bound the sum of coefficients of monomials of p that are in S. We also prove generalizations of this theorem to (real stable) polynomials that are not multilinear. We use our theorem to give a new proof of Schrijver's inequality on the number of perfect matchings of a regular bipartite graph, generalize a recent result of Nikolov and Singh, and give deterministic polynomial time approximation algorithms for several counting problems.","PeriodicalId":20615,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing","volume":"1131 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78177217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}