124 research outputs found
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
Lower Bounds for the Average and Smoothed Number of Pareto Optima
Smoothed analysis of multiobjective 0-1 linear optimization has drawn
considerable attention recently. The number of Pareto-optimal solutions (i.e.,
solutions with the property that no other solution is at least as good in all
the coordinates and better in at least one) for multiobjective optimization
problems is the central object of study. In this paper, we prove several lower
bounds for the expected number of Pareto optima. Our basic result is a lower
bound of \Omega_d(n^(d-1)) for optimization problems with d objectives and n
variables under fairly general conditions on the distributions of the linear
objectives. Our proof relates the problem of lower bounding the number of
Pareto optima to results in geometry connected to arrangements of hyperplanes.
We use our basic result to derive (1) To our knowledge, the first lower bound
for natural multiobjective optimization problems. We illustrate this for the
maximum spanning tree problem with randomly chosen edge weights. Our technique
is sufficiently flexible to yield such lower bounds for other standard
objective functions studied in this setting (such as, multiobjective shortest
path, TSP tour, matching). (2) Smoothed lower bound of min {\Omega_d(n^(d-1.5)
\phi^{(d-log d) (1-\Theta(1/\phi))}), 2^{\Theta(n)}}$ for the 0-1 knapsack
problem with d profits for phi-semirandom distributions for a version of the
knapsack problem. This improves the recent lower bound of Brunsch and Roeglin
The Hidden Convexity of Spectral Clustering
In recent years, spectral clustering has become a standard method for data
analysis used in a broad range of applications. In this paper we propose a new
class of algorithms for multiway spectral clustering based on optimization of a
certain "contrast function" over the unit sphere. These algorithms, partly
inspired by certain Independent Component Analysis techniques, are simple, easy
to implement and efficient.
Geometrically, the proposed algorithms can be interpreted as hidden basis
recovery by means of function optimization. We give a complete characterization
of the contrast functions admissible for provable basis recovery. We show how
these conditions can be interpreted as a "hidden convexity" of our optimization
problem on the sphere; interestingly, we use efficient convex maximization
rather than the more common convex minimization. We also show encouraging
experimental results on real and simulated data.Comment: 22 page
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