2,064 research outputs found
Approximating Hereditary Discrepancy via Small Width Ellipsoids
The Discrepancy of a hypergraph is the minimum attainable value, over
two-colorings of its vertices, of the maximum absolute imbalance of any
hyperedge. The Hereditary Discrepancy of a hypergraph, defined as the maximum
discrepancy of a restriction of the hypergraph to a subset of its vertices, is
a measure of its complexity. Lovasz, Spencer and Vesztergombi (1986) related
the natural extension of this quantity to matrices to rounding algorithms for
linear programs, and gave a determinant based lower bound on the hereditary
discrepancy. Matousek (2011) showed that this bound is tight up to a
polylogarithmic factor, leaving open the question of actually computing this
bound. Recent work by Nikolov, Talwar and Zhang (2013) showed a polynomial time
-approximation to hereditary discrepancy, as a by-product
of their work in differential privacy. In this paper, we give a direct simple
-approximation algorithm for this problem. We show that up to
this approximation factor, the hereditary discrepancy of a matrix is
characterized by the optimal value of simple geometric convex program that
seeks to minimize the largest norm of any point in a ellipsoid
containing the columns of . This characterization promises to be a useful
tool in discrepancy theory
Antimatroids and Balanced Pairs
We generalize the 1/3-2/3 conjecture from partially ordered sets to
antimatroids: we conjecture that any antimatroid has a pair of elements x,y
such that x has probability between 1/3 and 2/3 of appearing earlier than y in
a uniformly random basic word of the antimatroid. We prove the conjecture for
antimatroids of convex dimension two (the antimatroid-theoretic analogue of
partial orders of width two), for antimatroids of height two, for antimatroids
with an independent element, and for the perfect elimination antimatroids and
node search antimatroids of several classes of graphs. A computer search shows
that the conjecture is true for all antimatroids with at most six elements.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
On largest volume simplices and sub-determinants
We show that the problem of finding the simplex of largest volume in the
convex hull of points in can be approximated with a factor
of in polynomial time. This improves upon the previously best
known approximation guarantee of by Khachiyan. On the other hand,
we show that there exists a constant such that this problem cannot be
approximated with a factor of , unless . % This improves over the
inapproximability that was previously known. Our hardness result holds
even if , in which case there exists a \bar c\,^{d}-approximation
algorithm that relies on recent sampling techniques, where is again a
constant. We show that similar results hold for the problem of finding the
largest absolute value of a subdeterminant of a matrix
Some relational structures with polynomial growth and their associated algebras II: Finite generation
The profile of a relational structure is the function which
counts for every integer the number, possibly infinite, of
substructures of induced on the -element subsets, isomorphic
substructures being identified. If takes only finite values, this
is the Hilbert function of a graded algebra associated with , the age
algebra , introduced by P.~J.~Cameron.
In a previous paper, we studied the relationship between the properties of a
relational structure and those of their algebra, particularly when the
relational structure admits a finite monomorphic decomposition. This
setting still encompasses well-studied graded commutative algebras like
invariant rings of finite permutation groups, or the rings of quasi-symmetric
polynomials.
In this paper, we investigate how far the well know algebraic properties of
those rings extend to age algebras. The main result is a combinatorial
characterization of when the age algebra is finitely generated. In the special
case of tournaments, we show that the age algebra is finitely generated if and
only if the profile is bounded. We explore the Cohen-Macaulay property in the
special case of invariants of permutation groupoids. Finally, we exhibit
sufficient conditions on the relational structure that make naturally the age
algebra into a Hopf algebra.Comment: 27 pages; submitte
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