211 research outputs found
Pruning Processes and a New Characterization of Convex Geometries
We provide a new characterization of convex geometries via a multivariate
version of an identity that was originally proved by Maneva, Mossel and
Wainwright for certain combinatorial objects arising in the context of the
k-SAT problem. We thus highlight the connection between various
characterizations of convex geometries and a family of removal processes
studied in the literature on random structures.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures; the exposition has changed significantly from
previous versio
Cache-Oblivious Peeling of Random Hypergraphs
The computation of a peeling order in a randomly generated hypergraph is the
most time-consuming step in a number of constructions, such as perfect hashing
schemes, random -SAT solvers, error-correcting codes, and approximate set
encodings. While there exists a straightforward linear time algorithm, its poor
I/O performance makes it impractical for hypergraphs whose size exceeds the
available internal memory.
We show how to reduce the computation of a peeling order to a small number of
sequential scans and sorts, and analyze its I/O complexity in the
cache-oblivious model. The resulting algorithm requires
I/Os and time to peel a random hypergraph with edges.
We experimentally evaluate the performance of our implementation of this
algorithm in a real-world scenario by using the construction of minimal perfect
hash functions (MPHF) as our test case: our algorithm builds a MPHF of
billion keys in less than hours on a single machine. The resulting data
structure is both more space-efficient and faster than that obtained with the
current state-of-the-art MPHF construction for large-scale key sets
A Phase Transition in Minesweeper
We study the average-case complexity of the classic Minesweeper game in which players deduce the locations of mines on a two-dimensional lattice. Playing Minesweeper is known to be co-NP-complete. We show empirically that Minesweeper exhibits a phase transition analogous to the well-studied SAT phase transition. Above the critical mine density it becomes almost impossible to play Minesweeper by logical inference. We use a reduction to Boolean unsatisfiability to characterize the hardness of Minesweeper instances, and show that the hardness peaks at the phase transition. Furthermore, we demonstrate algorithmic barriers at the phase transition for polynomial-time approaches to Minesweeper inference. Finally, we comment on expectations for the asymptotic behavior of the phase transition
Tight Thresholds for Cuckoo Hashing via XORSAT
We settle the question of tight thresholds for offline cuckoo hashing. The
problem can be stated as follows: we have n keys to be hashed into m buckets
each capable of holding a single key. Each key has k >= 3 (distinct) associated
buckets chosen uniformly at random and independently of the choices of other
keys. A hash table can be constructed successfully if each key can be placed
into one of its buckets. We seek thresholds alpha_k such that, as n goes to
infinity, if n/m <= alpha for some alpha < alpha_k then a hash table can be
constructed successfully with high probability, and if n/m >= alpha for some
alpha > alpha_k a hash table cannot be constructed successfully with high
probability. Here we are considering the offline version of the problem, where
all keys and hash values are given, so the problem is equivalent to previous
models of multiple-choice hashing. We find the thresholds for all values of k >
2 by showing that they are in fact the same as the previously known thresholds
for the random k-XORSAT problem. We then extend these results to the setting
where keys can have differing number of choices, and provide evidence in the
form of an algorithm for a conjecture extending this result to cuckoo hash
tables that store multiple keys in a bucket.Comment: Revision 3 contains missing details of proofs, as appendix
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