Testing Small Set Expansion in General Graphs

We consider the problem of testing small set expansion for general graphs. A graph $G$ is a $(k,\phi)$-expander if every subset of volume at most $k$ has conductance at least $\phi$. Small set expansion has recently received significant attention due to its close connection to the unique games conjecture, the local graph partitioning algorithms and locally testable codes. We give testers with two-sided error and one-sided error in the adjacency list model that allows degree and neighbor queries to the oracle of the input graph. The testers take as input an $n$-vertex graph $G$, a volume bound $k$, an expansion bound $\phi$ and a distance parameter $\varepsilon>0$. For the two-sided error tester, with probability at least $2/3$, it accepts the graph if it is a $(k,\phi)$-expander and rejects the graph if it is $\varepsilon$-far from any $(k^*,\phi^*)$-expander, where $k^*=\Theta(k\varepsilon)$ and $\phi^*=\Theta(\frac{\phi^4}{\min\{\log(4m/k),\log n\}\cdot(\ln k)})$. The query complexity and running time of the tester are $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{m}\phi^{-4}\varepsilon^{-2})$, where $m$ is the number of edges of the graph. For the one-sided error tester, it accepts every $(k,\phi)$-expander, and with probability at least $2/3$, rejects every graph that is $\varepsilon$-far from $(k^*,\phi^*)$-expander, where $k^*=O(k^{1-\xi})$ and $\phi^*=O(\xi\phi^2)$ for any $0<\xi<1$. The query complexity and running time of this tester are $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{\frac{n}{\varepsilon^3}}+\frac{k}{\varepsilon \phi^4})$. We also give a two-sided error tester with smaller gap between $\phi^*$ and $\phi$ in the rotation map model that allows (neighbor, index) queries and degree queries.Comment: 23 pages; STACS 201

Testing Cluster Structure of Graphs

We study the problem of recognizing the cluster structure of a graph in the framework of property testing in the bounded degree model. Given a parameter $\varepsilon$, a $d$-bounded degree graph is defined to be $(k, \phi)$-clusterable, if it can be partitioned into no more than $k$ parts, such that the (inner) conductance of the induced subgraph on each part is at least $\phi$ and the (outer) conductance of each part is at most $c_{d,k}\varepsilon^4\phi^2$, where $c_{d,k}$ depends only on $d,k$. Our main result is a sublinear algorithm with the running time $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n}\cdot\mathrm{poly}(\phi,k,1/\varepsilon))$ that takes as input a graph with maximum degree bounded by $d$, parameters $k$, $\phi$, $\varepsilon$, and with probability at least $\frac23$, accepts the graph if it is $(k,\phi)$-clusterable and rejects the graph if it is $\varepsilon$-far from $(k, \phi^*)$-clusterable for $\phi^* = c'_{d,k}\frac{\phi^2 \varepsilon^4}{\log n}$, where $c'_{d,k}$ depends only on $d,k$. By the lower bound of $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$ on the number of queries needed for testing graph expansion, which corresponds to $k=1$ in our problem, our algorithm is asymptotically optimal up to polylogarithmic factors.Comment: Full version of STOC 201

Towards a General Direct Product Testing Theorem

The Direct Product encoding of a string a in {0,1}^n on an underlying domain V subseteq ([n] choose k), is a function DP_V(a) which gets as input a set S in V and outputs a restricted to S. In the Direct Product Testing Problem, we are given a function F:V -> {0,1}^k, and our goal is to test whether F is close to a direct product encoding, i.e., whether there exists some a in {0,1}^n such that on most sets S, we have F(S)=DP_V(a)(S). A natural test is as follows: select a pair (S,S\u27)in V according to some underlying distribution over V x V, query F on this pair, and check for consistency on their intersection. Note that the above distribution may be viewed as a weighted graph over the vertex set V and is referred to as a test graph. The testability of direct products was studied over various domains and test graphs: Dinur and Steurer (CCC \u2714) analyzed it when V equals the k-th slice of the Boolean hypercube and the test graph is a member of the Johnson graph family. Dinur and Kaufman (FOCS \u2717) analyzed it for the case where V is the set of faces of a Ramanujan complex, where in this case V=O_k(n). In this paper, we study the testability of direct products in a general setting, addressing the question: what properties of the domain and the test graph allow one to prove a direct product testing theorem? Towards this goal we introduce the notion of coordinate expansion of a test graph. Roughly speaking a test graph is a coordinate expander if it has global and local expansion, and has certain nice intersection properties on sampling. We show that whenever the test graph has coordinate expansion then it admits a direct product testing theorem. Additionally, for every k and n we provide a direct product domain V subseteq (n choose k) of size n, called the Sliding Window domain for which we prove direct product testability

Characterisations and Examples of Graph Classes with Bounded Expansion

Classes with bounded expansion, which generalise classes that exclude a topological minor, have recently been introduced by Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il and Ossona de Mendez. These classes are defined by the fact that the maximum average degree of a shallow minor of a graph in the class is bounded by a function of the depth of the shallow minor. Several linear-time algorithms are known for bounded expansion classes (such as subgraph isomorphism testing), and they allow restricted homomorphism dualities, amongst other desirable properties. In this paper we establish two new characterisations of bounded expansion classes, one in terms of so-called topological parameters, the other in terms of controlling dense parts. The latter characterisation is then used to show that the notion of bounded expansion is compatible with Erd\"os-R\'enyi model of random graphs with constant average degree. In particular, we prove that for every fixed $d>0$, there exists a class with bounded expansion, such that a random graph of order $n$ and edge probability $d/n$ asymptotically almost surely belongs to the class. We then present several new examples of classes with bounded expansion that do not exclude some topological minor, and appear naturally in the context of graph drawing or graph colouring. In particular, we prove that the following classes have bounded expansion: graphs that can be drawn in the plane with a bounded number of crossings per edge, graphs with bounded stack number, graphs with bounded queue number, and graphs with bounded non-repetitive chromatic number. We also prove that graphs with `linear' crossing number are contained in a topologically-closed class, while graphs with bounded crossing number are contained in a minor-closed class

Subset feedback vertex set is fixed parameter tractable

The classical Feedback Vertex Set problem asks, for a given undirected graph G and an integer k, to find a set of at most k vertices that hits all the cycles in the graph G. Feedback Vertex Set has attracted a large amount of research in the parameterized setting, and subsequent kernelization and fixed-parameter algorithms have been a rich source of ideas in the field. In this paper we consider a more general and difficult version of the problem, named Subset Feedback Vertex Set (SUBSET-FVS in short) where an instance comes additionally with a set S ? V of vertices, and we ask for a set of at most k vertices that hits all simple cycles passing through S. Because of its applications in circuit testing and genetic linkage analysis SUBSET-FVS was studied from the approximation algorithms perspective by Even et al. [SICOMP'00, SIDMA'00]. The question whether the SUBSET-FVS problem is fixed-parameter tractable was posed independently by Kawarabayashi and Saurabh in 2009. We answer this question affirmatively. We begin by showing that this problem is fixed-parameter tractable when parametrized by |S|. Next we present an algorithm which reduces the given instance to 2^k n^O(1) instances with the size of S bounded by O(k^3), using kernelization techniques such as the 2-Expansion Lemma, Menger's theorem and Gallai's theorem. These two facts allow us to give a 2^O(k log k) n^O(1) time algorithm solving the Subset Feedback Vertex Set problem, proving that it is indeed fixed-parameter tractable.Comment: full version of a paper presented at ICALP'1

Who Would be Interested in Services? An Entity Graph Learning System for User Targeting

With the growing popularity of various mobile devices, user targeting has received a growing amount of attention, which aims at effectively and efficiently locating target users that are interested in specific services. Most pioneering works for user targeting tasks commonly perform similarity-based expansion with a few active users as seeds, suffering from the following major issues: the unavailability of seed users for newcoming services and the unfriendliness of black-box procedures towards marketers. In this paper, we design an Entity Graph Learning (EGL) system to provide explainable user targeting ability meanwhile applicable to addressing the cold-start issue. EGL System follows the hybrid online-offline architecture to satisfy the requirements of scalability and timeliness. Specifically, in the offline stage, the system focuses on the heavyweight entity graph construction and user entity preference learning, in which we propose a Three-stage Relation Mining Procedure (TRMP), breaking loose from the expensive seed users. At the online stage, the system offers the ability of user targeting in real-time based on the entity graph from the offline stage. Since the user targeting process is based on graph reasoning, the whole process is transparent and operation-friendly to marketers. Finally, extensive offline experiments and online A/B testing demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed EGL System.Comment: Accepted by ICDE 202

Testing first-order properties for subclasses of sparse graphs

We present a linear-time algorithm for deciding first-order (FO) properties in classes of graphs with bounded expansion, a notion recently introduced by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez. This generalizes several results from the literature, because many natural classes of graphs have bounded expansion: graphs of bounded tree-width, all proper minor-closed classes of graphs, graphs of bounded degree, graphs with no subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of a fixed graph, and graphs that can be drawn in a fixed surface in such a way that each edge crosses at most a constant number of other edges. We deduce that there is an almost linear-time algorithm for deciding FO properties in classes of graphs with locally bounded expansion. More generally, we design a dynamic data structure for graphs belonging to a fixed class of graphs of bounded expansion. After a linear-time initialization the data structure allows us to test an FO property in constant time, and the data structure can be updated in constant time after addition/deletion of an edge, provided the list of possible edges to be added is known in advance and their simultaneous addition results in a graph in the class. All our results also hold for relational structures and are based on the seminal result of Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez on the existence of low tree-depth colorings