This paper addresses the problem of finding the nearest neighbor (or one of the R-nearest neighbors) of a query object q in a database of n objects. In contrast with most existing approaches, we can only access the ``hidden'' space in which the objects live through a similarity oracle. The oracle, given two reference objects and a query object, returns the reference object closest to the query object. The oracle attempts to model the behavior of human users, capable of making statements about similarity, but not of assigning meaningful numerical values to distances between objects.
We start with a review of the pervasiveness of the nearest neighbor search problem and techniques used to solve it along with some experimental results. In the second chapter, we show reductions between two different classes of geo- metric proximity problems: the nearest neighbor problems to solve the Euclidean minimum spanning tree problem and the farthest neighbor problems to solve the k-centers problem. In the third chapter, we unify spatial partitioning trees un- der one framework the meta-tree. Finally, we propose a dual tree algorithm for Bichromatic Closest Pair and measure the complexi…
Prior methods for retrieval of nearest neighbors in high dimensions are fast and approximate--providing probabilistic guarantees of returning the correct answer--or slow and exact performing an exhaustive search. We present Certified Cosine, a novel approach to nearest-neighbors which takes advantage of structure present in the cosine similarity distance metric to offer certificates. When a certificate is constructed, it guarantees that the nearest neighbor set is correct, possibly avoiding an exhaustive search. Certified Cosine's certificates work with high dimensional data and outperform pre…
Locality-sensitive hashing (LSH), introduced by Indyk and Motwani in STOC '98, has been an extremely influential framework for nearest neighbor search in high-dimensional data sets. While theoretical work has focused on the approximate nearest neighbor problems, in practice LSH data structures with suitably chosen parameters are used to solve the exact nearest neighbor problem (with some error probability). Sublinear query time is often possible in practice even for exact nearest neighbor search, intuitively because the nearest neighbor tends to be significantly closer than other data points. …
We show an analog to the Fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform for Nearest Neighbor Preserving Embeddings in $\ell_2$. These are sparse, randomized embeddings that preserve the (approximate) nearest neighbors. The dimensionality of the embedding space is bounded not by the size of the embedded set n, but by its doubling dimension λ. For most large real-world datasets this will mean a considerably lower-dimensional embedding space than possible when preserving all distances. The resulting embeddings can be used with existing approximate nearest neighbor data structures to yield speed improvement…
Algorithms often carry out equally many computations for "easy" and "hard" problem instances. In particular, algorithms for finding nearest neighbors typically have the same running time regardless of the particular problem instance. In this paper, we consider the approximate k-nearest-neighbor problem, which is the problem of finding a subset of O(k) points in a given set of points that contains the set of k nearest neighbors of a given query point. We propose an algorithm based on adaptively estimating the distances, and show that it is essentially optimal out of algorithms that are only all…
In this note, we show that one can use average embeddings, introduced recently in [Naor'20, arXiv:1905.01280], to obtain efficient algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor search. In particular, a metric $X$ embeds into $\ell_2$ on average, with distortion $D$, if, for any distribution $μ$ on $X$, the embedding is $D$ Lipschitz and the (square of) distance does not decrease on average (wrt $μ$). In particular existence of such an embedding (assuming it is efficient) implies a $O(D^3)$ approximate nearest neighbor search under $X$. This can be seen as a strengthening of the classic (bi-Lipsc…
While the problem of approximate nearest neighbor search has been well-studied for Euclidean space and $\ell_1$, few non-trivial algorithms are known for $\ell_p$ when ($2 < p < \infty$). In this paper, we revisit this fundamental problem and present approximate nearest-neighbor search algorithms which give the first non-trivial approximation factor guarantees in this setting.
Reverse nearest neighbor queries are defined as follows: Given an input point-set P, and a query point q, find all the points p in P whose nearest point in P U {q} \ {p} is q. We give a data structure to answer reverse nearest neighbor queries in fixed-dimensional Euclidean space. Our data structure uses O(n) space, its preprocessing time is O(n log n), and its query time is O(log n).
We study the Approximate Nearest Neighbor problem for metric spaces where the query points are constrained to lie on a subspace of low doubling dimension, while the data is high-dimensional. We show that this problem can be solved efficiently despite the high dimensionality of the data.
The nearest neighbor problem is defined as follows: Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in some metric space $(X,D)$, build a data structure that, given any point $q$, returns a point in $P$ that is closest to $q$ (its "nearest neighbor" in $P$). The data structure stores additional information about the set $P$, which is then used to find the nearest neighbor without computing all distances between $q$ and $P$. The problem has a wide range of applications in machine learning, computer vision, databases and other fields. To reduce the time needed to find nearest neighbors and the amount of memory us…
Embedding into hyperbolic space is emerging as an effective representation technique for datasets that exhibit hierarchical structure. This development motivates the need for algorithms that are able to effectively extract knowledge and insights from datapoints embedded in negatively curved spaces. We focus on the problem of nearest neighbor search, a fundamental problem in data analysis. We present efficient algorithmic solutions that build upon established methods for nearest neighbor search in Euclidean space, allowing for easy adoption and integration with existing systems. We prove theore…
This paper proposes a new algorithm for reducing Approximate Nearest Neighbor problem to Approximate Near Neighbor problem. The advantage of this algorithm is that it achieves O(log n) query time. As a reduction problem, the uery time complexity is the times of invoking the algorithm for Approximate Near Neighbor problem. All former algorithms for the same reduction need polylog(n) query time. A box split method proposed by Vaidya is used in our paper to achieve the O(log n) query time complexity.
Many distributed learning techniques have been motivated by the increasing size of datasets and their inability to fit into main memory on a single machine. We propose an algorithm that finds the nearest neighbor in a graph locally without the need of visiting the whole graph. Our algorithm is distributed which further encourage scalability. We prove the convergence of the algorithm
We present a set of parallel algorithms for computing exact k-nearest neighbors in low dimensions. Many k-nearest neighbor algorithms use either a kd-tree or the Morton ordering of the point set; our algorithms combine these approaches using a data structure we call the \textit{zd-tree}. We show that this combination is both theoretically efficient under common assumptions, and fast in practice. For point sets of size $n$ with bounded expansion constant and bounded ratio, the zd-tree can be built in $O(n)$ work with $O(n^ε)$ span for constant $ε<1$, and searching for the $k$-nearest neighbors …
The k-d tree was one of the first spatial data structures proposed for nearest neighbor search. Its efficacy is diminished in high-dimensional spaces, but several variants, with randomization and overlapping cells, have proved to be successful in practice. We analyze three such schemes. We show that the probability that they fail to find the nearest neighbor, for any data set and any query point, is directly related to a simple potential function that captures the difficulty of the point configuration. We then bound this potential function in two situations of interest: the first, when data co…
We are given a directed graph $G = (V,E)$ with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, with positive weights on the edges, and a parameter $k >0$. We show how to compute, for every vertex $v \in V$, its $k$ nearest-neighbors. The algorithm runs in $O( k ( n \log n + m ) )$ time, and follows by a somewhat careful modification of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. This result is probably folklore, but we were unable to find a reference to it -- thus, this note.
"Reverse Nearest Neighbor" query finds applications in decision support systems, profile-based marketing, emergency services etc. In this paper, we point out a few flaws in the branch and bound algorithms proposed earlier for computing monochromatic RkNN queries over data points stored in hierarchical index. We give suitable counter examples to validate our claims and propose a correct algorithm for the corresponding problem. We show that our algorithm is correct by identifying necessary conditions behind correctness of algorithms for this problem.
The Optimal Transport (a.k.a. Wasserstein) distance is an increasingly popular similarity measure for rich data domains, such as images or text documents. This raises the necessity for fast nearest neighbor search algorithms according to this distance, which poses a substantial computational bottleneck on massive datasets. In this work we introduce Flowtree, a fast and accurate approximation algorithm for the Wasserstein-$1$ distance. We formally analyze its approximation factor and running time. We perform extensive experimental evaluation of nearest neighbor search algorithms in the $W_1$ di…
We contribute a 2D nearest-neighbor quantum architecture for Shor's algorithm to factor an $n$-bit number in $O(\log^2(n))$ depth. Our implementation uses parallel phase estimation, constant-depth fanout and teleportation, and constant-depth carry-save modular addition. We derive upper bounds on the circuit resources of our architecture under a new 2D nearest-neighbor model which allows a classical controller and parallel, communicating modules. We also contribute a novel constant-depth circuit for unbounded quantum unfanout in our new model. Finally, we provide a comparison to all previous ne…
We present PUFFINN, a parameterless LSH-based index for solving the $k$-nearest neighbor problem with probabilistic guarantees. By parameterless we mean that the user is only required to specify the amount of memory the index is supposed to use and the result quality that should be achieved. The index combines several heuristic ideas known in the literature. By small adaptions to the query algorithm, we make heuristics rigorous. We perform experiments on real-world and synthetic inputs to evaluate implementation choices and show that the implementation satisfies the quality guarantees while be…
Graph-based approaches are empirically shown to be very successful for the nearest neighbor search (NNS). However, there has been very little research on their theoretical guarantees. We fill this gap and rigorously analyze the performance of graph-based NNS algorithms, specifically focusing on the low-dimensional (d << \log n) regime. In addition to the basic greedy algorithm on nearest neighbor graphs, we also analyze the most successful heuristics commonly used in practice: speeding up via adding shortcut edges and improving accuracy via maintaining a dynamic list of candidates. We believe …
This paper studies a discrepancy-sensitive approach to dynamic fractional cascading. We provide an efficient data structure for dominated maxima searching in a dynamic set of points in the plane, which in turn leads to an efficient dynamic data structure that can answer queries for nearest neighbors using any Minkowski metric. We provide an efficient data structure for dominated maxima searching in a dynamic set of points in the plane, which in turn leads to an efficient dynamic data structure that can answer queries for nearest neighbors using any Minkowski metric.
We present a very simple family of traveling salesman instances with $n$ cities where the nearest neighbor rule may produce a tour that is $Θ(\log n)$ times longer than an optimum solution. Our family works for the graphic, the euclidean, and the rectilinear traveling salesman problem at the same time. It improves the so far best known lower bound in the euclidean case and proves for the first time a lower bound in the rectilinear case.
