21 research outputs found
Streaming Complexity of Approximating Max 2CSP and Max Acyclic Subgraph
We study the complexity of estimating the optimum value of a Boolean 2CSP (arity two constraint satisfaction problem) in the single-pass streaming setting, where the algorithm is presented the constraints in an arbitrary order. We give a streaming algorithm to estimate the optimum within a factor approaching 2/5 using logarithmic space, with high probability. This beats the trivial factor 1/4 estimate obtained by simply outputting 1/4-th of the total number of constraints.
The inspiration for our work is a lower bound of Kapralov, Khanna, and Sudan (SODA\u2715) who showed that a similar trivial estimate (of factor 1/2) is the best one can do for Max CUT. This lower bound implies that beating a factor 1/2 for Max DICUT (a special case of Max 2CSP), in particular, to distinguish between the case when the optimum is m/2 versus when it is at most (1/4+eps)m, where m is the total number of edges, requires polynomial space. We complement this hardness result by showing that for DICUT, one can distinguish between the case in which the optimum exceeds (1/2+eps)m and the case in which it is close to m/4.
We also prove that estimating the size of the maximum acyclic subgraph of a directed graph, when its edges are presented in a single-pass stream, within a factor better than 7/8 requires polynomial space
Streaming Hardness of Unique Games
We study the problem of approximating the value of a Unique Game instance in the streaming model. A simple count of the number of constraints divided by p, the alphabet size of the Unique Game, gives a trivial p-approximation that can be computed in O(log n) space. Meanwhile, with high probability, a sample of O~(n) constraints suffices to estimate the optimal value to (1+epsilon) accuracy. We prove that any single-pass streaming algorithm that achieves a (p-epsilon)-approximation requires Omega_epsilon(sqrt n) space. Our proof is via a reduction from lower bounds for a communication problem that is a p-ary variant of the Boolean Hidden Matching problem studied in the literature. Given the utility of Unique Games as a starting point for reduction to other optimization problems, our strong hardness for approximating Unique Games could lead to downstream hardness results for streaming approximability for other CSP-like problems
Noisy Boolean Hidden Matching with Applications
The Boolean Hidden Matching (BHM) problem, introduced in a seminal paper of Gavinsky et al. [STOC\u2707], has played an important role in lower bounds for graph problems in the streaming model (e.g., subgraph counting, maximum matching, MAX-CUT, Schatten p-norm approximation). The BHM problem typically leads to ?(?n) space lower bounds for constant factor approximations, with the reductions generating graphs that consist of connected components of constant size. The related Boolean Hidden Hypermatching (BHH) problem provides ?(n^{1-1/t}) lower bounds for 1+O(1/t) approximation, for integers t ? 2. The corresponding reductions produce graphs with connected components of diameter about t, and essentially show that long range exploration is hard in the streaming model with an adversarial order of updates.
In this paper we introduce a natural variant of the BHM problem, called noisy BHM (and its natural noisy BHH variant), that we use to obtain stronger than ?(?n) lower bounds for approximating a number of the aforementioned problems in graph streams when the input graphs consist only of components of diameter bounded by a fixed constant.
We next introduce and study the graph classification problem, where the task is to test whether the input graph is isomorphic to a given graph. As a first step, we use the noisy BHM problem to show that the problem of classifying whether an underlying graph is isomorphic to a complete binary tree in insertion-only streams requires ?(n) space, which seems challenging to show using either BHM or BHH
Streaming Approximation Resistance of Every Ordering CSP
An ordering constraint satisfaction problem (OCSP) is given by a positive
integer and a constraint predicate mapping permutations on
to . Given an instance of OCSP on
variables and constraints, the goal is to find an ordering of the
variables that maximizes the number of constraints that are satisfied, where a
constraint specifies a sequence of distinct variables and the constraint is
satisfied by an ordering on the variables if the ordering induced on the
variables in the constraint satisfies . OCSPs capture natural problems
including "Maximum acyclic subgraph (MAS)" and "Betweenness".
In this work we consider the task of approximating the maximum number of
satisfiable constraints in the (single-pass) streaming setting, where an
instance is presented as a stream of constraints. We show that for every ,
OCSP is approximation-resistant to -space streaming algorithms.
This space bound is tight up to polylogarithmic factors. In the case of MAS our
result shows that for every , MAS is not
-approximable in space. The previous best
inapproximability result only ruled out a -approximation in
space.
Our results build on recent works of Chou, Golovnev, Sudan, Velingker, and
Velusamy who show tight, linear-space inapproximability results for a broad
class of (non-ordering) constraint satisfaction problems over arbitrary
(finite) alphabets. We design a family of appropriate CSPs (one for every )
from any given OCSP, and apply their work to this family of CSPs. We show that
the hard instances from this earlier work have a particular "small-set
expansion" property. By exploiting this combinatorial property, in combination
with the hardness results of the resulting families of CSPs, we give optimal
inapproximability results for all OCSPs.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure. Replaces earlier version with lower
bound, using new bounds from arXiv:2106.13078. To appear in APPROX'2
Streaming complexity of CSPs with randomly ordered constraints
We initiate a study of the streaming complexity of constraint satisfaction
problems (CSPs) when the constraints arrive in a random order. We show that
there exists a CSP, namely , for which random ordering
makes a provable difference. Whereas a approximation of
requires space with adversarial ordering,
we show that with random ordering of constraints there exists a
-approximation algorithm that only needs space. We also give
new algorithms for in variants of the adversarial ordering
setting. Specifically, we give a two-pass space
-approximation algorithm for general graphs and a single-pass
space -approximation algorithm for bounded degree
graphs.
On the negative side, we prove that CSPs where the satisfying assignments of
the constraints support a one-wise independent distribution require
-space for any non-trivial approximation, even when the
constraints are randomly ordered. This was previously known only for
adversarially ordered constraints. Extending the results to randomly ordered
constraints requires switching the hard instances from a union of random
matchings to simple Erd\"os-Renyi random (hyper)graphs and extending tools that
can perform Fourier analysis on such instances.
The only CSP to have been considered previously with random ordering is
where the ordering is not known to change the
approximability. Specifically it is known to be as hard to approximate with
random ordering as with adversarial ordering, for space
algorithms. Our results show a richer variety of possibilities and motivate
further study of CSPs with randomly ordered constraints
Sketching Approximability of (Weak) Monarchy Predicates
We analyze the sketching approximability of constraint satisfaction problems on Boolean domains, where the constraints are balanced linear threshold functions applied to literals. In particular, we explore the approximability of monarchy-like functions where the value of the function is determined by a weighted combination of the vote of the first variable (the president) and the sum of the votes of all remaining variables. The pure version of this function is when the president can only be overruled by when all remaining variables agree. For every k ? 5, we show that CSPs where the underlying predicate is a pure monarchy function on k variables have no non-trivial sketching approximation algorithm in o(?n) space. We also show infinitely many weaker monarchy functions for which CSPs using such constraints are non-trivially approximable by O(log(n)) space sketching algorithms. Moreover, we give the first example of sketching approximable asymmetric Boolean CSPs. Our results work within the framework of Chou, Golovnev, Sudan, and Velusamy (FOCS 2021) that characterizes the sketching approximability of all CSPs. Their framework can be applied naturally to get a computer-aided analysis of the approximability of any specific constraint satisfaction problem. The novelty of our work is in using their work to get an analysis that applies to infinitely many problems simultaneously