8,391 research outputs found
The Complexity of Approximately Counting Tree Homomorphisms
We study two computational problems, parameterised by a fixed tree H.
#HomsTo(H) is the problem of counting homomorphisms from an input graph G to H.
#WHomsTo(H) is the problem of counting weighted homomorphisms to H, given an
input graph G and a weight function for each vertex v of G. Even though H is a
tree, these problems turn out to be sufficiently rich to capture all of the
known approximation behaviour in #P. We give a complete trichotomy for
#WHomsTo(H). If H is a star then #WHomsTo(H) is in FP. If H is not a star but
it does not contain a certain induced subgraph J_3 then #WHomsTo(H) is
equivalent under approximation-preserving (AP) reductions to #BIS, the problem
of counting independent sets in a bipartite graph. This problem is complete for
the class #RHPi_1 under AP-reductions. Finally, if H contains an induced J_3
then #WHomsTo(H) is equivalent under AP-reductions to #SAT, the problem of
counting satisfying assignments to a CNF Boolean formula. Thus, #WHomsTo(H) is
complete for #P under AP-reductions. The results are similar for #HomsTo(H)
except that a rich structure emerges if H contains an induced J_3. We show that
there are trees H for which #HomsTo(H) is #SAT-equivalent (disproving a
plausible conjecture of Kelk). There is an interesting connection between these
homomorphism-counting problems and the problem of approximating the partition
function of the ferromagnetic Potts model. In particular, we show that for a
family of graphs J_q, parameterised by a positive integer q, the problem
#HomsTo(H) is AP-interreducible with the problem of approximating the partition
function of the q-state Potts model. It was not previously known that the Potts
model had a homomorphism-counting interpretation. We use this connection to
obtain some additional upper bounds for the approximation complexity of
#HomsTo(J_q)
Hardness of submodular cost allocation : lattice matching and a simplex coloring conjecture
We consider the Minimum Submodular Cost Allocation (MSCA) problem. In this problem, we are given k submodular cost functions f1, ... , fk: 2V -> R+ and the goal is to partition V into k sets A1, ..., Ak so as to minimize the total cost sumi = 1,k fi(Ai). We show that MSCA is inapproximable within any multiplicative factor even in very restricted settings; prior to our work, only Set Cover hardness was known. In light of this negative result, we turn our attention to special cases of the problem. We consider the setting in which each function fi satisfies fi = gi + h, where each gi is monotone submodular and h is (possibly non-monotone) submodular. We give an O(k log |V|) approximation for this problem. We provide some evidence that a factor of k may be necessary, even in the special case of HyperLabel. In particular, we formulate a simplex-coloring conjecture that implies a Unique-Games-hardness of (k - 1 - epsilon) for k-uniform HyperLabel and label set [k]. We provide a proof of the simplex-coloring conjecture for k=3
From Sparse Signals to Sparse Residuals for Robust Sensing
One of the key challenges in sensor networks is the extraction of information
by fusing data from a multitude of distinct, but possibly unreliable sensors.
Recovering information from the maximum number of dependable sensors while
specifying the unreliable ones is critical for robust sensing. This sensing
task is formulated here as that of finding the maximum number of feasible
subsystems of linear equations, and proved to be NP-hard. Useful links are
established with compressive sampling, which aims at recovering vectors that
are sparse. In contrast, the signals here are not sparse, but give rise to
sparse residuals. Capitalizing on this form of sparsity, four sensing schemes
with complementary strengths are developed. The first scheme is a convex
relaxation of the original problem expressed as a second-order cone program
(SOCP). It is shown that when the involved sensing matrices are Gaussian and
the reliable measurements are sufficiently many, the SOCP can recover the
optimal solution with overwhelming probability. The second scheme is obtained
by replacing the initial objective function with a concave one. The third and
fourth schemes are tailored for noisy sensor data. The noisy case is cast as a
combinatorial problem that is subsequently surrogated by a (weighted) SOCP.
Interestingly, the derived cost functions fall into the framework of robust
multivariate linear regression, while an efficient block-coordinate descent
algorithm is developed for their minimization. The robust sensing capabilities
of all schemes are verified by simulated tests.Comment: Under review for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Signal
Processing (revised version
Semi-Streaming Set Cover
This paper studies the set cover problem under the semi-streaming model. The
underlying set system is formalized in terms of a hypergraph whose
edges arrive one-by-one and the goal is to construct an edge cover with the objective of minimizing the cardinality (or cost in the weighted
case) of . We consider a parameterized relaxation of this problem, where
given some , the goal is to construct an edge -cover, namely, a subset of edges incident to all but an
-fraction of the vertices (or their benefit in the weighted case).
The key limitation imposed on the algorithm is that its space is limited to
(poly)logarithmically many bits per vertex.
Our main result is an asymptotically tight trade-off between and
the approximation ratio: We design a semi-streaming algorithm that on input
graph , constructs a succinct data structure such that for
every , an edge -cover that approximates
the optimal edge \mbox{(-)cover} within a factor of can be
extracted from (efficiently and with no additional space
requirements), where In particular for the traditional
set cover problem we obtain an -approximation. This algorithm is
proved to be best possible by establishing a family (parameterized by
) of matching lower bounds.Comment: Full version of the extended abstract that will appear in Proceedings
of ICALP 2014 track
Combining Voting Rules Together
We propose a simple method for combining together voting rules that performs
a run-off between the different winners of each voting rule. We prove that this
combinator has several good properties. For instance, even if just one of the
base voting rules has a desirable property like Condorcet consistency, the
combination inherits this property. In addition, we prove that combining voting
rules together in this way can make finding a manipulation more computationally
difficult. Finally, we study the impact of this combinator on approximation
methods that find close to optimal manipulations
On the Hardness of Partially Dynamic Graph Problems and Connections to Diameter
Conditional lower bounds for dynamic graph problems has received a great deal
of attention in recent years. While many results are now known for the
fully-dynamic case and such bounds often imply worst-case bounds for the
partially dynamic setting, it seems much more difficult to prove amortized
bounds for incremental and decremental algorithms. In this paper we consider
partially dynamic versions of three classic problems in graph theory. Based on
popular conjectures we show that:
-- No algorithm with amortized update time exists for
incremental or decremental maximum cardinality bipartite matching. This
significantly improves on the bound for sparse graphs
of Henzinger et al. [STOC'15] and bound of Kopelowitz,
Pettie and Porat. Our linear bound also appears more natural. In addition, the
result we present separates the node-addition model from the edge insertion
model, as an algorithm with total update time exists for the
former by Bosek et al. [FOCS'14].
-- No algorithm with amortized update time exists for
incremental or decremental maximum flow in directed and weighted sparse graphs.
No such lower bound was known for partially dynamic maximum flow previously.
Furthermore no algorithm with amortized update time
exists for directed and unweighted graphs or undirected and weighted graphs.
-- No algorithm with amortized update time exists
for incremental or decremental -approximating the diameter
of an unweighted graph. We also show a slightly stronger bound if node
additions are allowed. [...]Comment: To appear at ICALP'16. Abstract truncated to fit arXiv limit
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