Optimal and fast detection of spatial clusters with scan statistics

We consider the detection of multivariate spatial clusters in the Bernoulli model with $N$ locations, where the design distribution has weakly dependent marginals. The locations are scanned with a rectangular window with sides parallel to the axes and with varying sizes and aspect ratios. Multivariate scan statistics pose a statistical problem due to the multiple testing over many scan windows, as well as a computational problem because statistics have to be evaluated on many windows. This paper introduces methodology that leads to both statistically optimal inference and computationally efficient algorithms. The main difference to the traditional calibration of scan statistics is the concept of grouping scan windows according to their sizes, and then applying different critical values to different groups. It is shown that this calibration of the scan statistic results in optimal inference for spatial clusters on both small scales and on large scales, as well as in the case where the cluster lives on one of the marginals. Methodology is introduced that allows for an efficient approximation of the set of all rectangles while still guaranteeing the statistical optimality results described above. It is shown that the resulting scan statistic has a computational complexity that is almost linear in $N$.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS732 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

A QPTAS for Maximum Weight Independent Set of Polygons with Polylogarithmically Many Vertices

The Maximum Weight Independent Set of Polygons problem is a fundamental problem in computational geometry. Given a set of weighted polygons in the 2-dimensional plane, the goal is to find a set of pairwise non-overlapping polygons with maximum total weight. Due to its wide range of applications, the MWISP problem and its special cases have been extensively studied both in the approximation algorithms and the computational geometry community. Despite a lot of research, its general case is not well-understood. Currently the best known polynomial time algorithm achieves an approximation ratio of n^(epsilon) [Fox and Pach, SODA 2011], and it is not even clear whether the problem is APX-hard. We present a (1+epsilon)-approximation algorithm, assuming that each polygon in the input has at most a polylogarithmic number of vertices. Our algorithm has quasi-polynomial running time. We use a recently introduced framework for approximating maximum weight independent set in geometric intersection graphs. The framework has been used to construct a QPTAS in the much simpler case of axis-parallel rectangles. We extend it in two ways, to adapt it to our much more general setting. First, we show that its technical core can be reduced to the case when all input polygons are triangles. Secondly, we replace its key technical ingredient which is a method to partition the plane using only few edges such that the objects stemming from the optimal solution are evenly distributed among the resulting faces and each object is intersected only a few times. Our new procedure for this task is not more complex than the original one, and it can handle the arising difficulties due to the arbitrary angles of the polygons. Note that already this obstacle makes the known analysis for the above framework fail. Also, in general it is not well understood how to handle this difficulty by efficient approximation algorithms

Parameterized Approximation Schemes for Independent Set of Rectangles and Geometric Knapsack

The area of parameterized approximation seeks to combine approximation and parameterized algorithms to obtain, e.g., (1+epsilon)-approximations in f(k,epsilon)n^O(1) time where k is some parameter of the input. The goal is to overcome lower bounds from either of the areas. We obtain the following results on parameterized approximability: - In the maximum independent set of rectangles problem (MISR) we are given a collection of n axis parallel rectangles in the plane. Our goal is to select a maximum-cardinality subset of pairwise non-overlapping rectangles. This problem is NP-hard and also W[1]-hard [Marx, ESA\u2705]. The best-known polynomial-time approximation factor is O(log log n) [Chalermsook and Chuzhoy, SODA\u2709] and it admits a QPTAS [Adamaszek and Wiese, FOCS\u2713; Chuzhoy and Ene, FOCS\u2716]. Here we present a parameterized approximation scheme (PAS) for MISR, i.e. an algorithm that, for any given constant epsilon>0 and integer k>0, in time f(k,epsilon)n^g(epsilon), either outputs a solution of size at least k/(1+epsilon), or declares that the optimum solution has size less than k. - In the (2-dimensional) geometric knapsack problem (2DK) we are given an axis-aligned square knapsack and a collection of axis-aligned rectangles in the plane (items). Our goal is to translate a maximum cardinality subset of items into the knapsack so that the selected items do not overlap. In the version of 2DK with rotations (2DKR), we are allowed to rotate items by 90 degrees. Both variants are NP-hard, and the best-known polynomial-time approximation factor is 2+epsilon [Jansen and Zhang, SODA\u2704]. These problems admit a QPTAS for polynomially bounded item sizes [Adamaszek and Wiese, SODA\u2715]. We show that both variants are W[1]-hard. Furthermore, we present a PAS for 2DKR. For all considered problems, getting time f(k,epsilon)n^O(1), rather than f(k,epsilon)n^g(epsilon), would give FPT time f\u27(k)n^O(1) exact algorithms by setting epsilon=1/(k+1), contradicting W[1]-hardness. Instead, for each fixed epsilon>0, our PASs give (1+epsilon)-approximate solutions in FPT time. For both MISR and 2DKR our techniques also give rise to preprocessing algorithms that take n^g(epsilon) time and return a subset of at most k^g(epsilon) rectangles/items that contains a solution of size at least k/(1+epsilon) if a solution of size k exists. This is a special case of the recently introduced notion of a polynomial-size approximate kernelization scheme [Lokshtanov et al., STOC\u2717]