How Hard is Counting Triangles in the Streaming Model

The problem of (approximately) counting the number of triangles in a graph is one of the basic problems in graph theory. In this paper we study the problem in the streaming model. We study the amount of memory required by a randomized algorithm to solve this problem. In case the algorithm is allowed one pass over the stream, we present a best possible lower bound of $\Omega(m)$ for graphs $G$ with $m$ edges on $n$ vertices. If a constant number of passes is allowed, we show a lower bound of $\Omega(m/T)$, $T$ the number of triangles. We match, in some sense, this lower bound with a 2-pass $O(m/T^{1/3})$-memory algorithm that solves the problem of distinguishing graphs with no triangles from graphs with at least $T$ triangles. We present a new graph parameter $\rho(G)$ -- the triangle density, and conjecture that the space complexity of the triangles problem is $\Omega(m/\rho(G))$. We match this by a second algorithm that solves the distinguishing problem using $O(m/\rho(G))$-memory

FLEET: Butterfly Estimation from a Bipartite Graph Stream

We consider space-efficient single-pass estimation of the number of butterflies, a fundamental bipartite graph motif, from a massive bipartite graph stream where each edge represents a connection between entities in two different partitions. We present a space lower bound for any streaming algorithm that can estimate the number of butterflies accurately, as well as FLEET, a suite of algorithms for accurately estimating the number of butterflies in the graph stream. Estimates returned by the algorithms come with provable guarantees on the approximation error, and experiments show good tradeoffs between the space used and the accuracy of approximation. We also present space-efficient algorithms for estimating the number of butterflies within a sliding window of the most recent elements in the stream. While there is a significant body of work on counting subgraphs such as triangles in a unipartite graph stream, our work seems to be one of the few to tackle the case of bipartite graph streams.Comment: This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Seyed-Vahid Sanei-Mehri, Yu Zhang, Ahmet Erdem Sariyuce and Srikanta Tirthapura. "FLEET: Butterfly Estimation from a Bipartite Graph Stream". The 28th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Managemen

A second look at counting triangles in graph streams (corrected)

In this paper we present improved results on the problem of counting triangles in edge streamed graphs. For graphs with m edges and at least T triangles, we show that an extra look over the stream yields a two-pass streaming algorithm that uses O((m)/(ε4.5sqrt(T))) space and outputs a (1+ε) approximation of the number of triangles in the graph. This improves upon the two-pass streaming tester of Braverman, Ostrovsky and Vilenchik, ICALP 2013, which distinguishes between triangle-free graphs and graphs with at least T triangle using O((m)/(T1/3)) space. Also, in terms of dependence on T, we show that more passes would not lead to a better space bound. In other words, we prove there is no constant pass streaming algorithm that distinguishes between triangle-free graphs from graphs with at least T triangles using O((m)/(T1/2+ρ)) space for any constant ρ>=0

A Novel Approach to Finding Near-Cliques: The Triangle-Densest Subgraph Problem

Many graph mining applications rely on detecting subgraphs which are near-cliques. There exists a dichotomy between the results in the existing work related to this problem: on the one hand the densest subgraph problem (DSP) which maximizes the average degree over all subgraphs is solvable in polynomial time but for many networks fails to find subgraphs which are near-cliques. On the other hand, formulations that are geared towards finding near-cliques are NP-hard and frequently inapproximable due to connections with the Maximum Clique problem. In this work, we propose a formulation which combines the best of both worlds: it is solvable in polynomial time and finds near-cliques when the DSP fails. Surprisingly, our formulation is a simple variation of the DSP. Specifically, we define the triangle densest subgraph problem (TDSP): given $G(V,E)$, find a subset of vertices $S^*$ such that $\tau(S^*)=\max_{S \subseteq V} \frac{t(S)}{|S|}$, where $t(S)$ is the number of triangles induced by the set $S$. We provide various exact and approximation algorithms which the solve the TDSP efficiently. Furthermore, we show how our algorithms adapt to the more general problem of maximizing the $k$-clique average density. Finally, we provide empirical evidence that the TDSP should be used whenever the output of the DSP fails to output a near-clique.Comment: 42 page

Streaming Verification of Graph Properties

Streaming interactive proofs (SIPs) are a framework for outsourced computation. A computationally limited streaming client (the verifier) hands over a large data set to an untrusted server (the prover) in the cloud and the two parties run a protocol to confirm the correctness of result with high probability. SIPs are particularly interesting for problems that are hard to solve (or even approximate) well in a streaming setting. The most notable of these problems is finding maximum matchings, which has received intense interest in recent years but has strong lower bounds even for constant factor approximations. In this paper, we present efficient streaming interactive proofs that can verify maximum matchings exactly. Our results cover all flavors of matchings (bipartite/non-bipartite and weighted). In addition, we also present streaming verifiers for approximate metric TSP. In particular, these are the first efficient results for weighted matchings and for metric TSP in any streaming verification model.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure, 1 tabl

Improved triangle counting in graph streams: Neighborhood multi-sampling

In this thesis, we study the problem of estimating the number of triangles of an undirected graph in the data stream model. Some of the well-known streaming algorithms work as follows: Sample a single triangle with high enough probability and repeat this basic step to obtain a global triangle count. For example, the neighborhood sampling algorithm attempts to sample a triangle by randomly choosing a single edge e, a single neighbor f of e and waits for a third edge that completes the triangle. The basic sampling step in the algorithm is repeated multiple times to obtain an estimate for the global triangle count in the input graph stream. In this work, we propose a multi-sampling variant of this algorithm. We provide a theoretical analysis of the algorithm and prove that it improves upon the known space and accuracy bounds. We experimentally show that this algorithm outperforms several well-known triangle counting streaming algorithms

Triangle counting in graph streams: Power of multi-sampling

Some of the well known streaming algorithms to estimate number of triangles in a graph stream work as follows: Sample a single triangle with high enough probability and repeat this basic step to obtain a global triangle count. For example, one such algorithm uniformly at random picks a single vertex v and a single edge e and checks whether the two cross edges that connect v to e appear in the stream. In this algorithm, the basic sampling step is repeated multiple times to obtain an estimate for the global triangle count in the input graph stream. This work, proposes a multi-sampling variant of this algorithm: Instead of randomly choosing a single vertex and edge, randomly sample multiple vertices and multiple edges and collect cross edges that connect sampled vertices to the sampled edges. We provide a theoretical analysis of this algorithm and prove that this simple modification improves upon the known space and accuracy bounds. We experimentally show that the proposed algorithm out performs several well known triangle counting streaming algorithms