11,346 research outputs found
Metric Embedding via Shortest Path Decompositions
We study the problem of embedding shortest-path metrics of weighted graphs
into spaces. We introduce a new embedding technique based on low-depth
decompositions of a graph via shortest paths. The notion of Shortest Path
Decomposition depth is inductively defined: A (weighed) path graph has shortest
path decomposition (SPD) depth . General graph has an SPD of depth if it
contains a shortest path whose deletion leads to a graph, each of whose
components has SPD depth at most . In this paper we give an
-distortion embedding for graphs of SPD
depth at most . This result is asymptotically tight for any fixed ,
while for it is tight up to second order terms.
As a corollary of this result, we show that graphs having pathwidth embed
into with distortion . For
, this improves over the best previous bound of Lee and Sidiropoulos that
was exponential in ; moreover, for other values of it gives the first
embeddings whose distortion is independent of the graph size . Furthermore,
we use the fact that planar graphs have SPD depth to give a new
proof that any planar graph embeds into with distortion . Our approach also gives new results for graphs with bounded treewidth,
and for graphs excluding a fixed minor
Online Service with Delay
In this paper, we introduce the online service with delay problem. In this
problem, there are points in a metric space that issue service requests
over time, and a server that serves these requests. The goal is to minimize the
sum of distance traveled by the server and the total delay in serving the
requests. This problem models the fundamental tradeoff between batching
requests to improve locality and reducing delay to improve response time, that
has many applications in operations management, operating systems, logistics,
supply chain management, and scheduling.
Our main result is to show a poly-logarithmic competitive ratio for the
online service with delay problem. This result is obtained by an algorithm that
we call the preemptive service algorithm. The salient feature of this algorithm
is a process called preemptive service, which uses a novel combination of
(recursive) time forwarding and spatial exploration on a metric space. We hope
this technique will be useful for related problems such as reordering buffer
management, online TSP, vehicle routing, etc. We also generalize our results to
servers.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures, Appeared in 49th ACM Symposium on Theory of
Computing (STOC), 201
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