4,207 research outputs found
Steiner Point Removal with Distortion
In the Steiner point removal (SPR) problem, we are given a weighted graph
and a set of terminals of size . The objective is to
find a minor of with only the terminals as its vertex set, such that
the distance between the terminals will be preserved up to a small
multiplicative distortion. Kamma, Krauthgamer and Nguyen [KKN15] used a
ball-growing algorithm with exponential distributions to show that the
distortion is at most . Cheung [Che17] improved the analysis of
the same algorithm, bounding the distortion by . We improve the
analysis of this ball-growing algorithm even further, bounding the distortion
by
Graph Minors for Preserving Terminal Distances Approximately - Lower and Upper Bounds
Given a graph where vertices are partitioned into k terminals and non-terminals, the goal is to compress the graph (i.e., reduce the number of non-terminals) using minor operations while preserving terminal distances approximately. The distortion of a compressed graph is the maximum multiplicative blow-up of distances between all pairs of terminals. We study the trade-off between the number of non-terminals and the distortion. This problem generalizes the Steiner Point Removal (SPR) problem, in which all non-terminals must be removed.
We introduce a novel black-box reduction to convert any lower bound on distortion for the SPR problem into a super-linear lower bound on the number of non-terminals, with the same distortion, for our problem. This allows us to show that there exist graphs such that every minor with distortion less than 2 / 2.5 / 3 must have Omega(k^2) / Omega(k^{5/4}) / Omega(k^{6/5}) non-terminals, plus more trade-offs in between. The black-box reduction has an interesting consequence: if the tight lower bound on distortion for the SPR problem is super-constant, then allowing any O(k) non-terminals will not help improving the lower bound to a constant.
We also build on the existing results on spanners, distance oracles and connected 0-extensions to show a number of upper bounds for general graphs, planar graphs, graphs that exclude a fixed minor and bounded treewidth graphs. Among others, we show that any graph admits a minor with O(log k) distortion and O(k^2) non-terminals, and any planar graph admits a minor with
1 + epsilon distortion and ~O((k/epsilon)^2) non-terminals
Squarepants in a Tree: Sum of Subtree Clustering and Hyperbolic Pants Decomposition
We provide efficient constant factor approximation algorithms for the
problems of finding a hierarchical clustering of a point set in any metric
space, minimizing the sum of minimimum spanning tree lengths within each
cluster, and in the hyperbolic or Euclidean planes, minimizing the sum of
cluster perimeters. Our algorithms for the hyperbolic and Euclidean planes can
also be used to provide a pants decomposition, that is, a set of disjoint
simple closed curves partitioning the plane minus the input points into subsets
with exactly three boundary components, with approximately minimum total
length. In the Euclidean case, these curves are squares; in the hyperbolic
case, they combine our Euclidean square pants decomposition with our tree
clustering method for general metric spaces.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures. This version replaces the proof of what is now
Lemma 5.2, as the previous proof was erroneou
Vertex Sparsifiers: New Results from Old Techniques
Given a capacitated graph and a set of terminals ,
how should we produce a graph only on the terminals so that every
(multicommodity) flow between the terminals in could be supported in
with low congestion, and vice versa? (Such a graph is called a
flow-sparsifier for .) What if we want to be a "simple" graph? What if
we allow to be a convex combination of simple graphs?
Improving on results of Moitra [FOCS 2009] and Leighton and Moitra [STOC
2010], we give efficient algorithms for constructing: (a) a flow-sparsifier
that maintains congestion up to a factor of , where , (b) a convex combination of trees over the terminals that maintains
congestion up to a factor of , and (c) for a planar graph , a
convex combination of planar graphs that maintains congestion up to a constant
factor. This requires us to give a new algorithm for the 0-extension problem,
the first one in which the preimages of each terminal are connected in .
Moreover, this result extends to minor-closed families of graphs.
Our improved bounds immediately imply improved approximation guarantees for
several terminal-based cut and ordering problems.Comment: An extended abstract appears in the 13th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX),
2010. Final version to appear in SIAM J. Computin
Relaxed Voronoi: A Simple Framework for Terminal-Clustering Problems
We reprove three known algorithmic bounds for terminal-clustering problems, using a single framework that leads to simpler proofs. In this genre of problems, the input is a metric space (X,d) (possibly arising from a graph) and a subset of terminals K subset X, and the goal is to partition the points X such that each part, called a cluster, contains exactly one terminal (possibly with connectivity requirements) so as to minimize some objective. The three bounds we reprove are for Steiner Point Removal on trees [Gupta, SODA 2001], for Metric 0-Extension in bounded doubling dimension [Lee and Naor, unpublished 2003], and for Connected Metric 0-Extension [Englert et al., SICOMP 2014].
A natural approach is to cluster each point with its closest terminal, which would partition X into so-called Voronoi cells, but this approach can fail miserably due to its stringent cluster boundaries. A now-standard fix, which we call the Relaxed-Voronoi framework, is to use enlarged Voronoi cells, but to obtain disjoint clusters, the cells are computed greedily according to some order. This method, first proposed by Calinescu, Karloff and Rabani [SICOMP 2004], was employed successfully to provide state-of-the-art results for terminal-clustering problems on general metrics. However, for restricted families of metrics, e.g., trees and doubling metrics, only more complicated, ad-hoc algorithms are known. Our main contribution is to demonstrate that the Relaxed-Voronoi algorithm is applicable to restricted metrics, and actually leads to relatively simple algorithms and analyses
Prioritized Metric Structures and Embedding
Metric data structures (distance oracles, distance labeling schemes, routing
schemes) and low-distortion embeddings provide a powerful algorithmic
methodology, which has been successfully applied for approximation algorithms
\cite{llr}, online algorithms \cite{BBMN11}, distributed algorithms
\cite{KKMPT12} and for computing sparsifiers \cite{ST04}. However, this
methodology appears to have a limitation: the worst-case performance inherently
depends on the cardinality of the metric, and one could not specify in advance
which vertices/points should enjoy a better service (i.e., stretch/distortion,
label size/dimension) than that given by the worst-case guarantee.
In this paper we alleviate this limitation by devising a suit of {\em
prioritized} metric data structures and embeddings. We show that given a
priority ranking of the graph vertices (respectively,
metric points) one can devise a metric data structure (respectively, embedding)
in which the stretch (resp., distortion) incurred by any pair containing a
vertex will depend on the rank of the vertex. We also show that other
important parameters, such as the label size and (in some sense) the dimension,
may depend only on . In some of our metric data structures (resp.,
embeddings) we achieve both prioritized stretch (resp., distortion) and label
size (resp., dimension) {\em simultaneously}. The worst-case performance of our
metric data structures and embeddings is typically asymptotically no worse than
of their non-prioritized counterparts.Comment: To appear at STOC 201
O(1) Steiner Point Removal in Series-Parallel Graphs
We study how to vertex-sparsify a graph while preserving both the graph's
metric and structure. Specifically, we study the Steiner point removal (SPR)
problem where we are given a weighted graph and terminal set and must compute a weighted minor of which
approximates 's metric on . A major open question in the area of metric
embeddings is the existence of multiplicative distortion SPR solutions
for every (non-trivial) minor-closed family of graphs. To this end prior work
has studied SPR on trees, cactus and outerplanar graphs and showed that in
these graphs such a minor exists with distortion.
We give distortion SPR solutions for series-parallel graphs, extending
the frontier of this line of work. The main engine of our approach is a new
metric decomposition for series-parallel graphs which we call a hammock
decomposition. Roughly, a hammock decomposition is a forest-like structure that
preserves certain critical parts of the metric induced by a series-parallel
graph
Resolving the Steiner Point Removal Problem in Planar Graphs via Shortcut Partitions
Recently the authors [CCLMST23] introduced the notion of shortcut partition
of planar graphs and obtained several results from the partition, including a
tree cover with trees for planar metrics and an additive embedding into
small treewidth graphs. In this note, we apply the same partition to resolve
the Steiner point removal (SPR) problem in planar graphs: Given any set of
terminals in an arbitrary edge-weighted planar graph , we construct a minor
of whose vertex set is , which preserves the shortest-path distances
between all pairs of terminals in up to a constant factor. This resolves in
the affirmative an open problem that has been asked repeatedly in literature.Comment: Manuscript not intended for publication. The results have been
subsumed by arXiv:2308.00555 from the same author
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