204 research outputs found
Certification of Bounds of Non-linear Functions: the Templates Method
The aim of this work is to certify lower bounds for real-valued multivariate
functions, defined by semialgebraic or transcendental expressions. The
certificate must be, eventually, formally provable in a proof system such as
Coq. The application range for such a tool is widespread; for instance Hales'
proof of Kepler's conjecture yields thousands of inequalities. We introduce an
approximation algorithm, which combines ideas of the max-plus basis method (in
optimal control) and of the linear templates method developed by Manna et al.
(in static analysis). This algorithm consists in bounding some of the
constituents of the function by suprema of quadratic forms with a well chosen
curvature. This leads to semialgebraic optimization problems, solved by
sum-of-squares relaxations. Templates limit the blow up of these relaxations at
the price of coarsening the approximation. We illustrate the efficiency of our
framework with various examples from the literature and discuss the interfacing
with Coq.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
Narrow Proofs May Be Maximally Long
We prove that there are 3-CNF formulas over n variables that can be refuted
in resolution in width w but require resolution proofs of size n^Omega(w). This
shows that the simple counting argument that any formula refutable in width w
must have a proof in size n^O(w) is essentially tight. Moreover, our lower
bound generalizes to polynomial calculus resolution (PCR) and Sherali-Adams,
implying that the corresponding size upper bounds in terms of degree and rank
are tight as well. Our results do not extend all the way to Lasserre, however,
where the formulas we study have proofs of constant rank and size polynomial in
both n and w
Certification of Real Inequalities -- Templates and Sums of Squares
We consider the problem of certifying lower bounds for real-valued
multivariate transcendental functions. The functions we are dealing with are
nonlinear and involve semialgebraic operations as well as some transcendental
functions like , , , etc. Our general framework is to use
different approximation methods to relax the original problem into polynomial
optimization problems, which we solve by sparse sums of squares relaxations. In
particular, we combine the ideas of the maxplus estimators (originally
introduced in optimal control) and of the linear templates (originally
introduced in static analysis by abstract interpretation). The nonlinear
templates control the complexity of the semialgebraic relaxations at the price
of coarsening the maxplus approximations. In that way, we arrive at a new -
template based - certified global optimization method, which exploits both the
precision of sums of squares relaxations and the scalability of abstraction
methods. We analyze the performance of the method on problems from the global
optimization literature, as well as medium-size inequalities issued from the
Flyspeck project.Comment: 27 pages, 3 figures, 4 table
Narrow proofs may be maximally long
We prove that there are 3-CNF formulas over n variables that can be refuted in resolution in width w but require resolution proofs of size n(Omega(w)). This shows that the simple counting argument that any formula refutable in width w must have a proof in size n(O(w)) is essentially tight. Moreover, our lower bound generalizes to polynomial calculus resolution and Sherali-Adams, implying that the corresponding size upper bounds in terms of degree and rank are tight as well. The lower bound does not extend all the way to Lasserre, however, since we show that there the formulas we study have proofs of constant rank and size polynomial in both n and w.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Certified Roundoff Error Bounds Using Semidefinite Programming.
Roundoff errors cannot be avoided when implementing numerical programs with finite precision. The ability to reason about rounding is especially important if one wants to explore a range of potential representations, for instance for FPGAs or custom hardware implementation. This problem becomes challenging when the program does not employ solely linear operations as non-linearities are inherent to many interesting computational problems in real-world applications. Existing solutions to reasoning are limited in the presence of nonlinear correlations between variables, leading to either imprecise bounds or high analysis time. Furthermore, while it is easy to implement a straightforward method such as interval arithmetic, sophisticated techniques are less straightforward to implement in a formal setting. Thus there is a need for methods which output certificates that can be formally validated inside a proof assistant. We present a framework to provide upper bounds on absolute roundoff errors. This framework is based on optimization techniques employing semidefinite programming and sums of squares certificates, which can be formally checked inside the Coq theorem prover. Our tool covers a wide range of nonlinear programs, including polynomials and transcendental operations as well as conditional statements. We illustrate the efficiency and precision of this tool on non-trivial programs coming from biology, optimization and space control. Our tool produces more precise error bounds for 37 percent of all programs and yields better performance in 73 percent of all programs
MaxSAT Resolution and Subcube Sums
We study the MaxRes rule in the context of certifying unsatisfiability. We
show that it can be exponentially more powerful than tree-like resolution, and
when augmented with weakening (the system MaxResW), p-simulates tree-like
resolution. In devising a lower bound technique specific to MaxRes (and not
merely inheriting lower bounds from Res), we define a new proof system called
the SubCubeSums proof system. This system, which p-simulates MaxResW, can be
viewed as a special case of the semialgebraic Sherali-Adams proof system. In
expressivity, it is the integral restriction of conical juntas studied in the
contexts of communication complexity and extension complexity. We show that it
is not simulated by Res. Using a proof technique qualitatively different from
the lower bounds that MaxResW inherits from Res, we show that Tseitin
contradictions on expander graphs are hard to refute in SubCubeSums. We also
establish a lower bound technique via lifting: for formulas requiring large
degree in SubCubeSums, their XOR-ification requires large size in SubCubeSums
Approximability and proof complexity
This work is concerned with the proof-complexity of certifying that
optimization problems do \emph{not} have good solutions. Specifically we
consider bounded-degree "Sum of Squares" (SOS) proofs, a powerful algebraic
proof system introduced in 1999 by Grigoriev and Vorobjov. Work of Shor,
Lasserre, and Parrilo shows that this proof system is automatizable using
semidefinite programming (SDP), meaning that any -variable degree- proof
can be found in time . Furthermore, the SDP is dual to the well-known
Lasserre SDP hierarchy, meaning that the "-round Lasserre value" of an
optimization problem is equal to the best bound provable using a degree- SOS
proof. These ideas were exploited in a recent paper by Barak et al.\ (STOC
2012) which shows that the known "hard instances" for the Unique-Games problem
are in fact solved close to optimally by a constant level of the Lasserre SDP
hierarchy.
We continue the study of the power of SOS proofs in the context of difficult
optimization problems. In particular, we show that the Balanced-Separator
integrality gap instances proposed by Devanur et al.\ can have their optimal
value certified by a degree-4 SOS proof. The key ingredient is an SOS proof of
the KKL Theorem. We also investigate the extent to which the Khot--Vishnoi
Max-Cut integrality gap instances can have their optimum value certified by an
SOS proof. We show they can be certified to within a factor .952 ()
using a constant-degree proof. These investigations also raise an interesting
mathematical question: is there a constant-degree SOS proof of the Central
Limit Theorem?Comment: 34 page
On the complexity of range searching among curves
Modern tracking technology has made the collection of large numbers of
densely sampled trajectories of moving objects widely available. We consider a
fundamental problem encountered when analysing such data: Given polygonal
curves in , preprocess into a data structure that answers
queries with a query curve and radius for the curves of that
have \Frechet distance at most to .
We initiate a comprehensive analysis of the space/query-time trade-off for
this data structuring problem. Our lower bounds imply that any data structure
in the pointer model model that achieves query time, where is
the output size, has to use roughly space in
the worst case, even if queries are mere points (for the discrete \Frechet
distance) or line segments (for the continuous \Frechet distance). More
importantly, we show that more complex queries and input curves lead to
additional logarithmic factors in the lower bound. Roughly speaking, the number
of logarithmic factors added is linear in the number of edges added to the
query and input curve complexity. This means that the space/query time
trade-off worsens by an exponential factor of input and query complexity. This
behaviour addresses an open question in the range searching literature: whether
it is possible to avoid the additional logarithmic factors in the space and
query time of a multilevel partition tree. We answer this question negatively.
On the positive side, we show we can build data structures for the \Frechet
distance by using semialgebraic range searching. Our solution for the discrete
\Frechet distance is in line with the lower bound, as the number of levels in
the data structure is , where denotes the maximal number of vertices
of a curve. For the continuous \Frechet distance, the number of levels
increases to
Radii minimal projections of polytopes and constrained optimization of symmetric polynomials
We provide a characterization of the radii minimal projections of polytopes
onto -dimensional subspaces in Euclidean space \E^n. Applied on simplices
this characterization allows to reduce the computation of an outer radius to a
computation in the circumscribing case or to the computation of an outer radius
of a lower-dimensional simplex. In the second part of the paper, we use this
characterization to determine the sequence of outer -radii of regular
simplices (which are the radii of smallest enclosing cylinders). This settles a
question which arose from the incidence that a paper by Wei{\ss}bach (1983) on
this determination was erroneous. In the proof, we first reduce the problem to
a constrained optimization problem of symmetric polynomials and then to an
optimization problem in a fixed number of variables with additional integer
constraints.Comment: Minor revisions. To appear in Advances in Geometr
Size-Degree Trade-Offs for Sums-of-Squares and Positivstellensatz Proofs
We show that if a system of degree-k polynomial constraints on n Boolean variables has a Sums-of-Squares (SOS) proof of unsatisfiability with at most s many monomials, then it also has one whose degree is of the order of the square root of n log s plus k. A similar statement holds for the more general Positivstellensatz (PS) proofs. This establishes size-degree trade-offs for SOS and PS that match their analogues for weaker proof systems such as Resolution, Polynomial Calculus, and the proof systems for the LP and SDP hierarchies of Lovász and Schrijver. As a corollary to this, and to the known degree lower bounds, we get optimal integrality gaps for exponential size SOS proofs for sparse random instances of the standard NP-hard constraint optimization problems. We also get exponential size SOS lower bounds for Tseitin and Knapsack formulas. The proof of our main result relies on a zero-gap duality theorem for pre-ordered vector spaces that admit an order unit, whose specialization to PS and SOS may be of independent interest.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
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