202 research outputs found
Distributed PCP Theorems for Hardness of Approximation in P
We present a new distributed model of probabilistically checkable proofs
(PCP). A satisfying assignment to a CNF formula is
shared between two parties, where Alice knows , Bob knows
, and both parties know . The goal is to have
Alice and Bob jointly write a PCP that satisfies , while
exchanging little or no information. Unfortunately, this model as-is does not
allow for nontrivial query complexity. Instead, we focus on a non-deterministic
variant, where the players are helped by Merlin, a third party who knows all of
.
Using our framework, we obtain, for the first time, PCP-like reductions from
the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) to approximation problems in P.
In particular, under SETH we show that there are no truly-subquadratic
approximation algorithms for Bichromatic Maximum Inner Product over
{0,1}-vectors, Bichromatic LCS Closest Pair over permutations, Approximate
Regular Expression Matching, and Diameter in Product Metric. All our
inapproximability factors are nearly-tight. In particular, for the first two
problems we obtain nearly-polynomial factors of ; only
-factor lower bounds (under SETH) were known before
Four Soviets Walk the Dog-Improved Bounds for Computing the Fr\'echet Distance
Given two polygonal curves in the plane, there are many ways to define a
notion of similarity between them. One popular measure is the Fr\'echet
distance. Since it was proposed by Alt and Godau in 1992, many variants and
extensions have been studied. Nonetheless, even more than 20 years later, the
original algorithm by Alt and Godau for computing the Fr\'echet
distance remains the state of the art (here, denotes the number of edges on
each curve). This has led Helmut Alt to conjecture that the associated decision
problem is 3SUM-hard.
In recent work, Agarwal et al. show how to break the quadratic barrier for
the discrete version of the Fr\'echet distance, where one considers sequences
of points instead of polygonal curves. Building on their work, we give a
randomized algorithm to compute the Fr\'echet distance between two polygonal
curves in time on a pointer machine
and in time on a word RAM. Furthermore, we show that
there exists an algebraic decision tree for the decision problem of depth
, for some . We believe that this
reveals an intriguing new aspect of this well-studied problem. Finally, we show
how to obtain the first subquadratic algorithm for computing the weak Fr\'echet
distance on a word RAM.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures. A preliminary version appeared in SODA 201
Optimization with Sparsity-Inducing Penalties
Sparse estimation methods are aimed at using or obtaining parsimonious
representations of data or models. They were first dedicated to linear variable
selection but numerous extensions have now emerged such as structured sparsity
or kernel selection. It turns out that many of the related estimation problems
can be cast as convex optimization problems by regularizing the empirical risk
with appropriate non-smooth norms. The goal of this paper is to present from a
general perspective optimization tools and techniques dedicated to such
sparsity-inducing penalties. We cover proximal methods, block-coordinate
descent, reweighted -penalized techniques, working-set and homotopy
methods, as well as non-convex formulations and extensions, and provide an
extensive set of experiments to compare various algorithms from a computational
point of view
Improved Approximation for Longest Common Subsequence over Small Alphabets
This paper investigates the approximability of the Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) problem. The fastest algorithm for solving the LCS problem exactly runs in essentially quadratic time in the length of the input, and it is known that under the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis the quadratic running time cannot be beaten. There are no such limitations for the approximate computation of the LCS however, except in some limited scenarios. There is also a scarcity of approximation algorithms. When the two given strings are over an alphabet of size k, returning the subsequence formed by the most frequent symbol occurring in both strings achieves a 1/k approximation for the LCS. It is an open problem whether a better than 1/k approximation can be achieved in truly subquadratic time (O(n^{2-?}) time for constant ? > 0).
A recent result [Rubinstein and Song SODA\u272020] showed that a 1/2+? approximation for the LCS over a binary alphabet is possible in truly subquadratic time, provided the input strings have the same length. In this paper we show that if a 1/2+? approximation (for ? > 0) is achievable for binary LCS in truly subquadratic time when the input strings can be unequal, then for every constant k, there is a truly subquadratic time algorithm that achieves a 1/k+? approximation for k-ary alphabet LCS for some ? > 0. Thus the binary case is the hardest. We also show that for every constant k, if one is given two strings of equal length over a k-ary alphabet, one can obtain a 1/k+? approximation for some constant ? > 0 in truly subquadratic time, thus extending the Rubinstein and Song result to all alphabets of constant size
Approximating Approximate Pattern Matching
Given a text of length and a pattern of length , the
approximate pattern matching problem asks for computation of a particular
\emph{distance} function between and every -substring of . We
consider a multiplicative approximation variant of this
problem, for distance function. In this paper, we describe two
-approximate algorithms with a runtime of
for all (constant) non-negative values
of . For constant we show a deterministic
-approximation algorithm. Previously, such run time was known
only for the case of distance, by Gawrychowski and Uzna\'nski [ICALP
2018] and only with a randomized algorithm. For constant we
show a randomized algorithm for the , thereby providing a smooth
tradeoff between algorithms of Kopelowitz and Porat [FOCS~2015, SOSA~2018] for
Hamming distance (case of ) and of Gawrychowski and Uzna\'nski for
distance
On the Complexity of String Matching for Graphs
Peer reviewe
On the Complexity of Exact Pattern Matching in Graphs: Binary Strings and Bounded Degree
Exact pattern matching in labeled graphs is the problem of searching paths of
a graph that spell the same string as the pattern . This
basic problem can be found at the heart of more complex operations on variation
graphs in computational biology, of query operations in graph databases, and of
analysis operations in heterogeneous networks, where the nodes of some paths
must match a sequence of labels or types. We describe a simple conditional
lower bound that, for any constant , an -time or an -time algorithm for exact pattern
matching on graphs, with node labels and patterns drawn from a binary alphabet,
cannot be achieved unless the Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH) is
false. The result holds even if restricted to undirected graphs of maximum
degree three or directed acyclic graphs of maximum sum of indegree and
outdegree three. Although a conditional lower bound of this kind can be somehow
derived from previous results (Backurs and Indyk, FOCS'16), we give a direct
reduction from SETH for dissemination purposes, as the result might interest
researchers from several areas, such as computational biology, graph database,
and graph mining, as mentioned before. Indeed, as approximate pattern matching
on graphs can be solved in time, exact and approximate matching are
thus equally hard (quadratic time) on graphs under the SETH assumption. In
comparison, the same problems restricted to strings have linear time vs
quadratic time solutions, respectively, where the latter ones have a matching
SETH lower bound on computing the edit distance of two strings (Backurs and
Indyk, STOC'15).Comment: Using Lemma 12 and Lemma 13 might to be enough to prove Lemma 14.
However, the proof of Lemma 14 is correct if you assume that the graph used
in the reduction is a DAG. Hence, since the problem is already quadratic for
a DAG and a binary alphabet, it has to be quadratic also for a general graph
and a binary alphabe
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