735 research outputs found
Approximately Counting Embeddings into Random Graphs
Let H be a graph, and let C_H(G) be the number of (subgraph isomorphic)
copies of H contained in a graph G. We investigate the fundamental problem of
estimating C_H(G). Previous results cover only a few specific instances of this
general problem, for example, the case when H has degree at most one
(monomer-dimer problem). In this paper, we present the first general subcase of
the subgraph isomorphism counting problem which is almost always efficiently
approximable. The results rely on a new graph decomposition technique.
Informally, the decomposition is a labeling of the vertices such that every
edge is between vertices with different labels and for every vertex all
neighbors with a higher label have identical labels. The labeling implicitly
generates a sequence of bipartite graphs which permits us to break the problem
of counting embeddings of large subgraphs into that of counting embeddings of
small subgraphs. Using this method, we present a simple randomized algorithm
for the counting problem. For all decomposable graphs H and all graphs G, the
algorithm is an unbiased estimator. Furthermore, for all graphs H having a
decomposition where each of the bipartite graphs generated is small and almost
all graphs G, the algorithm is a fully polynomial randomized approximation
scheme.
We show that the graph classes of H for which we obtain a fully polynomial
randomized approximation scheme for almost all G includes graphs of degree at
most two, bounded-degree forests, bounded-length grid graphs, subdivision of
bounded-degree graphs, and major subclasses of outerplanar graphs,
series-parallel graphs and planar graphs, whereas unbounded-length grid graphs
are excluded.Comment: Earlier version appeared in Random 2008. Fixed an typo in Definition
3.
Randomised algorithms for counting and generating combinatorial structures
SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D85048 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
Marathon: An open source software library for the analysis of Markov-Chain Monte Carlo algorithms
In this paper, we consider the Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach for
random sampling of combinatorial objects. The running time of such an algorithm
depends on the total mixing time of the underlying Markov chain and is unknown
in general. For some Markov chains, upper bounds on this total mixing time
exist but are too large to be applicable in practice. We try to answer the
question, whether the total mixing time is close to its upper bounds, or if
there is a significant gap between them. In doing so, we present the software
library marathon which is designed to support the analysis of MCMC based
sampling algorithms. The main application of this library is to compute
properties of so-called state graphs which represent the structure of Markov
chains. We use marathon to investigate the quality of several bounding methods
on four well-known Markov chains for sampling perfect matchings and bipartite
graph realizations. In a set of experiments, we compute the total mixing time
and several of its bounds for a large number of input instances. We find that
the upper bound gained by the famous canonical path method is several
magnitudes larger than the total mixing time and deteriorates with growing
input size. In contrast, the spectral bound is found to be a precise
approximation of the total mixing time
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