4,926 research outputs found
Proving Weak Approximability Without Algorithms
A boolean predicate is said to be strongly approximation resistant if, given a near-satisfiable instance of its maximum constraint satisfaction problem, it is hard to find an assignment such that the fraction of constraints satisfied deviates significantly from the expected fraction of constraints satisfied by a random assignment. A predicate which is not strongly approximation resistant is known as weakly approximable.
We give a new method for proving the weak approximability of predicates, using a simple SDP relaxation, without designing and analyzing new rounding algorithms for each predicate. Instead, we use the recent characterization of strong approximation resistance by Khot et al. [STOC 2014], and show how to prove that for a given predicate, certain necessary conditions for strong resistance derived from their characterization, are violated. By their result, this implies the existence of a good rounding algorithm, proving weak approximability.
We show how this method can be used to obtain simple proofs of (weak approximability analogues of) various known results on approximability, as well as new results on weak approximability of symmetric predicates
On the Usefulness of Predicates
Motivated by the pervasiveness of strong inapproximability results for
Max-CSPs, we introduce a relaxed notion of an approximate solution of a
Max-CSP. In this relaxed version, loosely speaking, the algorithm is allowed to
replace the constraints of an instance by some other (possibly real-valued)
constraints, and then only needs to satisfy as many of the new constraints as
possible.
To be more precise, we introduce the following notion of a predicate
being \emph{useful} for a (real-valued) objective : given an almost
satisfiable Max- instance, there is an algorithm that beats a random
assignment on the corresponding Max- instance applied to the same sets of
literals. The standard notion of a nontrivial approximation algorithm for a
Max-CSP with predicate is exactly the same as saying that is useful for
itself.
We say that is useless if it is not useful for any . This turns out to
be equivalent to the following pseudo-randomness property: given an almost
satisfiable instance of Max- it is hard to find an assignment such that the
induced distribution on -bit strings defined by the instance is not
essentially uniform.
Under the Unique Games Conjecture, we give a complete and simple
characterization of useful Max-CSPs defined by a predicate: such a Max-CSP is
useless if and only if there is a pairwise independent distribution supported
on the satisfying assignments of the predicate. It is natural to also consider
the case when no negations are allowed in the CSP instance, and we derive a
similar complete characterization (under the UGC) there as well.
Finally, we also include some results and examples shedding additional light
on the approximability of certain Max-CSPs
On the NP-Hardness of Approximating Ordering Constraint Satisfaction Problems
We show improved NP-hardness of approximating Ordering Constraint
Satisfaction Problems (OCSPs). For the two most well-studied OCSPs, Maximum
Acyclic Subgraph and Maximum Betweenness, we prove inapproximability of
and .
An OCSP is said to be approximation resistant if it is hard to approximate
better than taking a uniformly random ordering. We prove that the Maximum
Non-Betweenness Problem is approximation resistant and that there are width-
approximation-resistant OCSPs accepting only a fraction of
assignments. These results provide the first examples of
approximation-resistant OCSPs subject only to P \NP
A Characterization of Approximation Resistance for Even -Partite CSPs
A constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) is said to be \emph{approximation
resistant} if it is hard to approximate better than the trivial algorithm which
picks a uniformly random assignment. Assuming the Unique Games Conjecture, we
give a characterization of approximation resistance for -partite CSPs
defined by an even predicate
Improved Hardness of Approximating Chromatic Number
We prove that for sufficiently large K, it is NP-hard to color K-colorable
graphs with less than 2^{K^{1/3}} colors. This improves the previous result of
K versus K^{O(log K)} in Khot [14]
From average case complexity to improper learning complexity
The basic problem in the PAC model of computational learning theory is to
determine which hypothesis classes are efficiently learnable. There is
presently a dearth of results showing hardness of learning problems. Moreover,
the existing lower bounds fall short of the best known algorithms.
The biggest challenge in proving complexity results is to establish hardness
of {\em improper learning} (a.k.a. representation independent learning).The
difficulty in proving lower bounds for improper learning is that the standard
reductions from -hard problems do not seem to apply in this
context. There is essentially only one known approach to proving lower bounds
on improper learning. It was initiated in (Kearns and Valiant 89) and relies on
cryptographic assumptions.
We introduce a new technique for proving hardness of improper learning, based
on reductions from problems that are hard on average. We put forward a (fairly
strong) generalization of Feige's assumption (Feige 02) about the complexity of
refuting random constraint satisfaction problems. Combining this assumption
with our new technique yields far reaching implications. In particular,
1. Learning 's is hard.
2. Agnostically learning halfspaces with a constant approximation ratio is
hard.
3. Learning an intersection of halfspaces is hard.Comment: 34 page
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