Lower Bounds on Time-Space Trade-Offs for Approximate Near Neighbors

We show tight lower bounds for the entire trade-off between space and query time for the Approximate Near Neighbor search problem. Our lower bounds hold in a restricted model of computation, which captures all hashing-based approaches. In articular, our lower bound matches the upper bound recently shown in [Laarhoven 2015] for the random instance on a Euclidean sphere (which we show in fact extends to the entire space $\mathbb{R}^d$ using the techniques from [Andoni, Razenshteyn 2015]). We also show tight, unconditional cell-probe lower bounds for one and two probes, improving upon the best known bounds from [Panigrahy, Talwar, Wieder 2010]. In particular, this is the first space lower bound (for any static data structure) for two probes which is not polynomially smaller than for one probe. To show the result for two probes, we establish and exploit a connection to locally-decodable codes.Comment: 47 pages, 2 figures; v2: substantially revised introduction, lots of small corrections; subsumed by arXiv:1608.03580 [cs.DS] (along with arXiv:1511.07527 [cs.DS]

Lower Bounds for Tolerant Junta and Unateness Testing via Rejection Sampling of Graphs

We introduce a new model for testing graph properties which we call the rejection sampling model. We show that testing bipartiteness of n-nodes graphs using rejection sampling queries requires complexity Omega~(n^2). Via reductions from the rejection sampling model, we give three new lower bounds for tolerant testing of Boolean functions of the form f : {0,1}^n -> {0,1}: - Tolerant k-junta testing with non-adaptive queries requires Omega~(k^2) queries. - Tolerant unateness testing requires Omega~(n) queries. - Tolerant unateness testing with non-adaptive queries requires Omega~(n^{3/2}) queries. Given the O~(k^{3/2})-query non-adaptive junta tester of Blais [Eric Blais, 2008], we conclude that non-adaptive tolerant junta testing requires more queries than non-tolerant junta testing. In addition, given the O~(n^{3/4})-query unateness tester of Chen, Waingarten, and Xie [Xi Chen et al., 2017] and the O~(n)-query non-adaptive unateness tester of Baleshzar, Chakrabarty, Pallavoor, Raskhodnikova, and Seshadhri [Roksana Baleshzar et al., 2017], we conclude that tolerant unateness testing requires more queries than non-tolerant unateness testing, in both adaptive and non-adaptive settings. These lower bounds provide the first separation between tolerant and non-tolerant testing for a natural property of Boolean functions

Four is the Cosmic Number

Thirteen, eight, five, four, four is the cosmic number

Playing Dominoes Is Hard, Except by Yourself

Dominoes is a popular and well-known game possibly dating back three millennia. Players are given a set of domino tiles, each with two labeled square faces, and take turns connecting them into a growing chain of dominoes by matching identical faces. We show that single-player dominoes is in P, while multiplayer dominoes is hard: when players cooperate, the game is NP-complete, and when players compete, the game is PSPACE-complete. In addition, we show that these hardness results easily extend to games involving team play

Optimal Hashing-based Time-Space Trade-offs for Approximate Near Neighbors

[See the paper for the full abstract.] We show tight upper and lower bounds for time-space trade-offs for the $c$-Approximate Near Neighbor Search problem. For the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space and $n$-point datasets, we develop a data structure with space $n^{1 + \rho_u + o(1)} + O(dn)$ and query time $n^{\rho_q + o(1)} + d n^{o(1)}$ for every $\rho_u, \rho_q \geq 0$ such that: \begin{equation} c^2 \sqrt{\rho_q} + (c^2 - 1) \sqrt{\rho_u} = \sqrt{2c^2 - 1}. \end{equation} This is the first data structure that achieves sublinear query time and near-linear space for every approximation factor $c > 1$, improving upon [Kapralov, PODS 2015]. The data structure is a culmination of a long line of work on the problem for all space regimes; it builds on Spherical Locality-Sensitive Filtering [Becker, Ducas, Gama, Laarhoven, SODA 2016] and data-dependent hashing [Andoni, Indyk, Nguyen, Razenshteyn, SODA 2014] [Andoni, Razenshteyn, STOC 2015]. Our matching lower bounds are of two types: conditional and unconditional. First, we prove tightness of the whole above trade-off in a restricted model of computation, which captures all known hashing-based approaches. We then show unconditional cell-probe lower bounds for one and two probes that match the above trade-off for $\rho_q = 0$, improving upon the best known lower bounds from [Panigrahy, Talwar, Wieder, FOCS 2010]. In particular, this is the first space lower bound (for any static data structure) for two probes which is not polynomially smaller than the one-probe bound. To show the result for two probes, we establish and exploit a connection to locally-decodable codes.Comment: 62 pages, 5 figures; a merger of arXiv:1511.07527 [cs.DS] and arXiv:1605.02701 [cs.DS], which subsumes both of the preprints. New version contains more elaborated proofs and fixed some typo