457 research outputs found
A New Multilayered PCP and the Hardness of Hypergraph Vertex Cover
Given a -uniform hyper-graph, the E-Vertex-Cover problem is to find the
smallest subset of vertices that intersects every hyper-edge. We present a new
multilayered PCP construction that extends the Raz verifier. This enables us to
prove that E-Vertex-Cover is NP-hard to approximate within factor
for any and any . The result is
essentially tight as this problem can be easily approximated within factor .
Our construction makes use of the biased Long-Code and is analyzed using
combinatorial properties of -wise -intersecting families of subsets
On Approximability of Bounded Degree Instances of Selected Optimization Problems
In order to cope with the approximation hardness of an underlying optimization problem, it is advantageous to consider specific families of instances with properties that can be exploited to obtain efficient approximation algorithms for the restricted version of the problem with improved performance guarantees. In this thesis, we investigate the approximation complexity of selected NP-hard optimization problems restricted to instances with bounded degree, occurrence or weight parameter. Specifically, we consider the family of dense instances, where typically the average degree is bounded from below by some function of the size of the instance. Complementarily, we examine the family of sparse instances, in which the average degree is bounded from above by some fixed constant. We focus on developing new methods for proving explicit approximation hardness results for general as well as for restricted instances. The fist part of the thesis contributes to the systematic investigation of the VERTEX COVER problem in k-hypergraphs and k-partite k-hypergraphs with density and regularity constraints. We design efficient approximation algorithms for the problems with improved performance guarantees as compared to the general case. On the other hand, we prove the optimality of our approximation upper bounds under the Unique Games Conjecture or a variant. In the second part of the thesis, we study mainly the approximation hardness of restricted instances of selected global optimization problems. We establish improved or in some cases the first inapproximability thresholds for the problems considered in this thesis such as the METRIC DIMENSION problem restricted to graphs with maximum degree 3 and the (1,2)-STEINER TREE problem. We introduce a new reductions method for proving explicit approximation lower bounds for problems that are related to the TRAVELING SALESPERSON (TSP) problem. In particular, we prove the best up to now inapproximability thresholds for the general METRIC TSP problem, the ASYMMETRIC TSP problem, the SHORTEST SUPERSTRING problem, the MAXIMUM TSP problem and TSP problems with bounded metrics
The Sketching Complexity of Graph and Hypergraph Counting
Subgraph counting is a fundamental primitive in graph processing, with
applications in social network analysis (e.g., estimating the clustering
coefficient of a graph), database processing and other areas. The space
complexity of subgraph counting has been studied extensively in the literature,
but many natural settings are still not well understood. In this paper we
revisit the subgraph (and hypergraph) counting problem in the sketching model,
where the algorithm's state as it processes a stream of updates to the graph is
a linear function of the stream. This model has recently received a lot of
attention in the literature, and has become a standard model for solving
dynamic graph streaming problems.
In this paper we give a tight bound on the sketching complexity of counting
the number of occurrences of a small subgraph in a bounded degree graph
presented as a stream of edge updates. Specifically, we show that the space
complexity of the problem is governed by the fractional vertex cover number of
the graph . Our subgraph counting algorithm implements a natural vertex
sampling approach, with sampling probabilities governed by the vertex cover of
. Our main technical contribution lies in a new set of Fourier analytic
tools that we develop to analyze multiplayer communication protocols in the
simultaneous communication model, allowing us to prove a tight lower bound. We
believe that our techniques are likely to find applications in other settings.
Besides giving tight bounds for all graphs , both our algorithm and lower
bounds extend to the hypergraph setting, albeit with some loss in space
complexity
Almost-Smooth Histograms and Sliding-Window Graph Algorithms
We study algorithms for the sliding-window model, an important variant of the
data-stream model, in which the goal is to compute some function of a
fixed-length suffix of the stream. We extend the smooth-histogram framework of
Braverman and Ostrovsky (FOCS 2007) to almost-smooth functions, which includes
all subadditive functions. Specifically, we show that if a subadditive function
can be -approximated in the insertion-only streaming model, then
it can be -approximated also in the sliding-window model with
space complexity larger by factor , where is the
window size.
We demonstrate how our framework yields new approximation algorithms with
relatively little effort for a variety of problems that do not admit the
smooth-histogram technique. For example, in the frequency-vector model, a
symmetric norm is subadditive and thus we obtain a sliding-window
-approximation algorithm for it. Another example is for streaming
matrices, where we derive a new sliding-window
-approximation algorithm for Schatten -norm. We then
consider graph streams and show that many graph problems are subadditive,
including maximum submodular matching, minimum vertex-cover, and maximum
-cover, thereby deriving sliding-window -approximation algorithms for
them almost for free (using known insertion-only algorithms). Finally, we
design for every an artificial function, based on the
maximum-matching size, whose almost-smoothness parameter is exactly
Approximate Hypergraph Coloring under Low-discrepancy and Related Promises
A hypergraph is said to be -colorable if its vertices can be colored
with colors so that no hyperedge is monochromatic. -colorability is a
fundamental property (called Property B) of hypergraphs and is extensively
studied in combinatorics. Algorithmically, however, given a -colorable
-uniform hypergraph, it is NP-hard to find a -coloring miscoloring fewer
than a fraction of hyperedges (which is achieved by a random
-coloring), and the best algorithms to color the hypergraph properly require
colors, approaching the trivial bound of as
increases.
In this work, we study the complexity of approximate hypergraph coloring, for
both the maximization (finding a -coloring with fewest miscolored edges) and
minimization (finding a proper coloring using fewest number of colors)
versions, when the input hypergraph is promised to have the following stronger
properties than -colorability:
(A) Low-discrepancy: If the hypergraph has discrepancy ,
we give an algorithm to color the it with colors.
However, for the maximization version, we prove NP-hardness of finding a
-coloring miscoloring a smaller than (resp. )
fraction of the hyperedges when (resp. ). Assuming
the UGC, we improve the latter hardness factor to for almost
discrepancy- hypergraphs.
(B) Rainbow colorability: If the hypergraph has a -coloring such
that each hyperedge is polychromatic with all these colors, we give a
-coloring algorithm that miscolors at most of the
hyperedges when , and complement this with a matching UG
hardness result showing that when , it is hard to even beat the
bound achieved by a random coloring.Comment: Approx 201
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