Dispersion of Mass and the Complexity of Randomized Geometric Algorithms

How much can randomness help computation? Motivated by this general question and by volume computation, one of the few instances where randomness provably helps, we analyze a notion of dispersion and connect it to asymptotic convex geometry. We obtain a nearly quadratic lower bound on the complexity of randomized volume algorithms for convex bodies in R^n (the current best algorithm has complexity roughly n^4, conjectured to be n^3). Our main tools, dispersion of random determinants and dispersion of the length of a random point from a convex body, are of independent interest and applicable more generally; in particular, the latter is closely related to the variance hypothesis from convex geometry. This geometric dispersion also leads to lower bounds for matrix problems and property testing.Comment: Full version of L. Rademacher, S. Vempala: Dispersion of Mass and the Complexity of Randomized Geometric Algorithms. Proc. 47th IEEE Annual Symp. on Found. of Comp. Sci. (2006). A version of it to appear in Advances in Mathematic

A Cubic Algorithm for Computing Gaussian Volume

We present randomized algorithms for sampling the standard Gaussian distribution restricted to a convex set and for estimating the Gaussian measure of a convex set, in the general membership oracle model. The complexity of integration is $O^*(n^3)$ while the complexity of sampling is $O^*(n^3)$ for the first sample and $O^*(n^2)$ for every subsequent sample. These bounds improve on the corresponding state-of-the-art by a factor of $n$. Our improvement comes from several aspects: better isoperimetry, smoother annealing, avoiding transformation to isotropic position and the use of the "speedy walk" in the analysis.Comment: 23 page

Graph isomorphism and volumes of convex bodies

We show that a nontrivial graph isomorphism problem of two undirected graphs, and more generally, the permutation similarity of two given $n\times n$ matrices, is equivalent to equalities of volumes of the induced three convex bounded polytopes intersected with a given sequence of balls, centered at the origin with radii $t_i\in (0,\sqrt{n-1})$, where $\{t_i\}$ is an increasing sequence converging to $\sqrt{n-1}$. These polytopes are characterized by $n^2$ inequalities in at most $n^2$ variables. The existence of fpras for computing volumes of convex bodies gives rise to a semi-frpas of order $O^*(n^{14})$ at most to find if given two undirected graphs are isomorphic.Comment: 9 page