12 research outputs found
On total communication complexity of collapsing protocols for pointer jumping problem
This paper focuses on bounding the total communication complexity of
collapsing protocols for multiparty pointer jumping problem (). Brody
and Chakrabati in \cite{bc08} proved that in such setting one of the players
must communicate at least bits. Liang in \cite{liang} has
shown protocol matching this lower bound on maximum complexity. His protocol,
however, was behaving worse than the trivial one in terms of total complexity
(number of bits sent by all players). He conjectured that achieving total
complexity better then the trivial one is impossible. In this paper we prove
this conjecture. Namely, we show that for a collapsing protocol for ,
the total communication complexity is at least which closes the gap
between lower and upper bound for total complexity of in collapsing
setting
Sublinear Communication Protocols for Multi-Party Pointer Jumping and a Related Lower Bound
We study the one-way number-on-the-forehead (NOF) communication complexity of
the -layer pointer jumping problem with vertices per layer. This classic
problem, which has connections to many aspects of complexity theory, has seen a
recent burst of research activity, seemingly preparing the ground for an
lower bound, for constant . Our first result is a surprising
sublinear -- i.e., -- upper bound for the problem that holds for , dashing hopes for such a lower bound. A closer look at the protocol
achieving the upper bound shows that all but one of the players involved are
collapsing, i.e., their messages depend only on the composition of the layers
ahead of them. We consider protocols for the pointer jumping problem where all
players are collapsing. Our second result shows that a strong
lower bound does hold in this case. Our third result is another upper bound
showing that nontrivial protocols for (a non-Boolean version of) pointer
jumping are possible even when all players are collapsing. Our lower bound
result uses a novel proof technique, different from those of earlier lower
bounds that had an information-theoretic flavor. We hope this is useful in
further study of the problem
Incidence Geometries and the Pass Complexity of Semi-Streaming Set Cover
Set cover, over a universe of size , may be modelled as a data-streaming
problem, where the sets that comprise the instance are to be read one by
one. A semi-streaming algorithm is allowed only space to process this stream. For each , we give a very
simple deterministic algorithm that makes passes over the input stream and
returns an appropriately certified -approximation to the
optimum set cover. More importantly, we proceed to show that this approximation
factor is essentially tight, by showing that a factor better than
is unachievable for a -pass semi-streaming
algorithm, even allowing randomisation. In particular, this implies that
achieving a -approximation requires
passes, which is tight up to the factor. These results extend to a
relaxation of the set cover problem where we are allowed to leave an
fraction of the universe uncovered: the tight bounds on the best
approximation factor achievable in passes turn out to be
. Our lower bounds are based
on a construction of a family of high-rank incidence geometries, which may be
thought of as vast generalisations of affine planes. This construction, based
on algebraic techniques, appears flexible enough to find other applications and
is therefore interesting in its own right.Comment: 20 page
Towards Tight Bounds for the Streaming Set Cover Problem
We consider the classic Set Cover problem in the data stream model. For
elements and sets () we give a -pass algorithm with a
strongly sub-linear space and logarithmic
approximation factor. This yields a significant improvement over the earlier
algorithm of Demaine et al. [DIMV14] that uses exponentially larger number of
passes. We complement this result by showing that the tradeoff between the
number of passes and space exhibited by our algorithm is tight, at least when
the approximation factor is equal to . Specifically, we show that any
algorithm that computes set cover exactly using passes
must use space in the regime of .
Furthermore, we consider the problem in the geometric setting where the
elements are points in and sets are either discs, axis-parallel
rectangles, or fat triangles in the plane, and show that our algorithm (with a
slight modification) uses the optimal space to find a
logarithmic approximation in passes.
Finally, we show that any randomized one-pass algorithm that distinguishes
between covers of size 2 and 3 must use a linear (i.e., ) amount of
space. This is the first result showing that a randomized, approximate
algorithm cannot achieve a space bound that is sublinear in the input size.
This indicates that using multiple passes might be necessary in order to
achieve sub-linear space bounds for this problem while guaranteeing small
approximation factors.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper is to appear in PODS 201
Lower bounds for quantile estimation in random-order and multi-pass streaming
Abstract. We present lower bounds on the space required to estimate the quantiles of a stream of numerical values. Quantile estimation is perhaps the most studied problem in the data stream model and it is relatively well understood in the basic single-pass data stream model in which the values are ordered adversarially. Natural extensions of this basic model include the random-order model in which the values are ordered randomly (e.g. [21, 5, 13, 11, 12]) and the multi-pass model in which an algorithm is permitted a limited number of passes over the stream (e.g. [6, 7, 1, 19, 2, 6, 7, 1, 19, 2]). We present lower bounds that complement existing upper bounds [21, 11] in both models. One consequence is an exponential separation between the random-order and adversarialorder models: using Ω(polylog n) space, exact selection requires Ω(log n) passes in the adversarial-order model while O(log log n) passes are sufficient in the random-order model.