194,112 research outputs found
Average Distance Queries through Weighted Samples in Graphs and Metric Spaces: High Scalability with Tight Statistical Guarantees
The average distance from a node to all other nodes in a graph, or from a
query point in a metric space to a set of points, is a fundamental quantity in
data analysis. The inverse of the average distance, known as the (classic)
closeness centrality of a node, is a popular importance measure in the study of
social networks. We develop novel structural insights on the sparsifiability of
the distance relation via weighted sampling. Based on that, we present highly
practical algorithms with strong statistical guarantees for fundamental
problems. We show that the average distance (and hence the centrality) for all
nodes in a graph can be estimated using single-source
distance computations. For a set of points in a metric space, we show
that after preprocessing which uses distance computations we can compute
a weighted sample of size such that the average
distance from any query point to can be estimated from the distances
from to . Finally, we show that for a set of points in a metric
space, we can estimate the average pairwise distance using
distance computations. The estimate is based on a weighted sample of
pairs of points, which is computed using distance
computations. Our estimates are unbiased with normalized mean square error
(NRMSE) of at most . Increasing the sample size by a
factor ensures that the probability that the relative error exceeds
is polynomially small.Comment: 21 pages, will appear in the Proceedings of RANDOM 201
Perseus: Randomized Point-based Value Iteration for POMDPs
Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) form an attractive
and principled framework for agent planning under uncertainty. Point-based
approximate techniques for POMDPs compute a policy based on a finite set of
points collected in advance from the agents belief space. We present a
randomized point-based value iteration algorithm called Perseus. The algorithm
performs approximate value backup stages, ensuring that in each backup stage
the value of each point in the belief set is improved; the key observation is
that a single backup may improve the value of many belief points. Contrary to
other point-based methods, Perseus backs up only a (randomly selected) subset
of points in the belief set, sufficient for improving the value of each belief
point in the set. We show how the same idea can be extended to dealing with
continuous action spaces. Experimental results show the potential of Perseus in
large scale POMDP problems
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