Counting the independent sets of a graph is a classical #P-complete problem, even in the bipartite case. We give an exponential-time approximation scheme for this problem which is faster than the best known algorithm for the exact problem. The running time of our algorithm on general graphs with error tolerance $\varepsilon$ is at most $O(2^{0.2680n})$ times a polynomial in $1/\varepsilon$. On bipartite graphs, the exponential term in the running time is improved to $O(2^{0.2372n})$. Our methods combine techniques from exact exponential algorithms with techniques from approximate counting. Along the way we generalise (to the multivariate case) the FPTAS of Sinclair, Srivastava, Štefankovič and Yin for approximating the hard-core partition function on graphs with bounded connective constant. Also, we obtain an FPTAS for counting independent sets on graphs with no vertices with degree at least 6 whose neighbours' degrees sum to 27 or more. By a result of Sly, there is no FPTAS that applies to all graphs with maximum degree 6 unless $\mbox{P}=\mbox{NP}$.
Given a directed acyclic graph with positive edge-weights, two vertices s and t, and a threshold-weight L, we present a fully-polynomial time approximation-scheme for the problem of counting the s-t paths of length at most L. We extend the algorithm for the case of two (or more) instances of the same problem. That is, given two graphs that have the same vertices and edges and differ only in edge-weights, and given two threshold-weights L_1 and L_2, we show how to approximately count the s-t paths that have length at most L_1 in the first graph and length at most L_2 in the second graph. We bel…
Many modern sequence alignment tools implement fast string matching using the space efficient data structure called FM-index. The succinct nature of this data structure presents unique challenges for the algorithm designers. In this paper, we explore the opportunities for parallelization of the exact and inexact matches and present an efficient SIMD solution for the Occ portion of the algorithm. Our implementation computes all eight Occ values required for the inexact match algorithm step in a single pass. We showcase the algorithm performance in a multi-core genome aligner and discuss effects…
We give a fully polynomial-time randomised approximation scheme (FPRAS) for the number of bases in a bicircular matroids. This is a natural class of matroids for which counting bases exactly is #P-hard and yet approximate counting can be done efficiently.
We give an algorithm for counting self-avoiding walks or self-avoiding polygons that runs in time $\exp(C\sqrt{n\log n})$ on 2-dimensional lattices and time $\exp(C_dn^{(d-1)/d}\log n)$ on $d$-dimensional lattices for $d>2$.
Fractal dimension is widely adopted in spatial databases and data mining, among others as a measure of dataset skewness. State-of-the-art algorithms for estimating the fractal dimension exhibit linear runtime complexity whether based on box-counting or approximation schemes. In this paper, we revisit a correlation fractal dimension estimation algorithm that redundantly rescans the dataset and, extending that work, we propose another linear, yet faster and as accurate method, which completes in a single pass.
In this paper, we design efficient algorithms to approximately count the number of edges of a given $k$-hypergraph, and to sample an approximately uniform random edge. The hypergraph is not given explicitly, and can be accessed only through its colourful independence oracle: The colourful independence oracle returns yes or no depending on whether a given subset of the vertices contains an edge that is colourful with respect to a given vertex-colouring. Our results extend and/or strengthen recent results in the graph oracle literature due to Beame et al. (ITCS 2018), Dell and Lapinskas (STOC 20…
We determine the computational complexity of approximately counting and sampling independent sets of a given size in bounded-degree graphs. That is, we identify a critical density $α_c(Δ)$ and provide (i) for $α< α_c(Δ)$ randomized polynomial-time algorithms for approximately sampling and counting independent sets of given size at most $αn$ in $n$-vertex graphs of maximum degree $Δ$; and (ii) a proof that unless NP=RP, no such algorithms exist for $α>α_c(Δ)$. The critical density is the occupancy fraction of the hard core model on the complete graph $K_{Δ+1}$ at the uniqueness threshold on the…
Count-Min Sketch is a widely adopted algorithm for approximate event counting in large scale processing. However, the original version of the Count-Min-Sketch (CMS) suffers of some deficiences, especially if one is interested by the low-frequency items, such as in text-mining related tasks. Several variants of CMS have been proposed to compensate for the high relative error for low-frequency events, but the proposed solutions tend to correct the errors instead of preventing them. In this paper, we propose the Count-Min-Log sketch, which uses logarithm-based, approximate counters instead of lin…
The Permutation Pattern Matching problem asks, given two permutations $σ$ on $n$ elements and $π$, whether $σ$ admits a subsequence with the same relative order as $π$ (or, in the counting version, how many such subsequences are there). This natural problem was shown by Bose, Buss and Lubiw [IPL 1998] to be NP-complete, and hence we should seek exact exponential time solutions. The asymptotically fastest such solution up to date, by Berendsohn, Kozma and Marx [IPEC 2019], works in $\mathcal{O}(1.6181^n)$ time. We design a simple and faster $\mathcal{O}(1.415^{n})$ time algorithm for both the d…
We present an approximate sampling framework and discuss how risk-limiting audits can compensate for these approximations, while maintaining their "risk-limiting" properties. Our framework is general and can compensate for counting mistakes made during audits. Moreover, we present and analyze a simple approximate sampling method,"$k$-cut", for picking a ballot randomly from a stack, without counting. Our method involves doing $k$ "cuts", each involving moving a random portion of ballots from the top to the bottom of the stack, and then picking the ballot on top. Unlike conventional methods of …
Estimating the number of subgraphs in data streams is a fundamental problem that has received great attention in the past decade. In this paper, we give improved streaming algorithms for approximately counting the number of occurrences of an arbitrary subgraph $H$, denoted $\# H$, when the input graph $G$ is represented as a stream of $m$ edges. To obtain our algorithms, we provide a generic transformation that converts constant-round sublinear-time graph algorithms in the query access model to constant-pass sublinear-space graph streaming algorithms. Using this transformation, we obtain the f…
Triangle counting is a fundamental building block in graph algorithms. In this paper, we propose a block-based triangle counting algorithm to reduce data movement during both sequential and parallel execution. Our block-based formulation makes the algorithm naturally suitable for heterogeneous architectures. The problem of partitioning the adjacency matrix of a graph is well-studied. Our task decomposition goes one step further: it partitions the set of triangles in the graph. By streaming these small tasks to compute resources, we can solve problems that do not fit on a device. We demonstrate…
An integer $n$ is $(y,z)$-semismooth if $n=pm$ where $m$ is an integer with all prime divisors $\le y$ and $p$ is 1 or a prime $\le z$. arge quantities of semismooth integers are utilized in modern integer factoring algorithms, such as the number field sieve, that incorporate the so-called large prime variant. Thus, it is useful for factoring practitioners to be able to estimate the value of $Ψ(x,y,z)$, the number of $(y,z)$-semismooth integers up to $x$, so that they can better set algorithm parameters and minimize running times, which could be weeks or months on a cluster supercomputer. In t…
We study the problem of counting the number of nodes in a slotted-time communication network, under the challenging assumption that nodes do not have identifiers and the network topology changes frequently. That is, for each time slot links among nodes can change arbitrarily provided that the network is always connected. Tolerating dynamic topologies is crucial in face of mobility and unreliable communication whereas, even if identifiers are available, it might be convenient to ignore them in massive networks with changing topology. Counting is a fundamental task in distributed computing since…
In this work, we consider $d$-{\sc Hyperedge Estimation} and $d$-{\sc Hyperedge Sample} problem in a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}(U(\mathcal{H}),\mathcal{F}(\mathcal{H}))$ in the query complexity framework, where $U(\mathcal{H})$ denotes the set of vertices and $\mathcal{F}(\mathcal{H})$ denotes the set of hyperedges. The oracle access to the hypergraph is called {\sc Colorful Independence Oracle} ({\sc CID}), which takes $d$ (non-empty) pairwise disjoint subsets of vertices $A_1,\ldots,A_d \subseteq U(\mathcal{H})$ as input, and answers whether there exists a hyperedge in $\mathcal{H}$ having (exa…
We consider the problem of estimating the number of triangles in a graph. This problem has been extensively studied in both theory and practice, but all existing algorithms read the entire graph. In this work we design a {\em sublinear-time\/} algorithm for approximating the number of triangles in a graph, where the algorithm is given query access to the graph. The allowed queries are degree queries, vertex-pair queries and neighbor queries. We show that for any given approximation parameter $0<ε<1$, the algorithm provides an estimate $\widehat{t}$ such that with high constant probability, $(1…
We consider the problem of counting straight-edge triangulations of a given set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane. Until very recently it was not known whether the exact number of triangulations of $P$ can be computed asymptotically faster than by enumerating all triangulations. We now know that the number of triangulations of $P$ can be computed in $O^{*}(2^{n})$ time, which is less than the lower bound of $Ω(2.43^{n})$ on the number of triangulations of any point set. In this paper we address the question of whether one can approximately count triangulations in sub-exponential time. We present …
By implementing algorithmic versions of Sapozhenko's graph container methods, we give new algorithms for approximating the number of independent sets in bipartite graphs. Our first algorithm applies to $d$-regular, bipartite graphs satisfying a weak expansion condition: when $d$ is constant, and the graph is a bipartite $Ω( \log^2 d/d)$-expander, we obtain an FPTAS for the number of independent sets. Previously such a result for $d>5$ was known only for graphs satisfying the much stronger expansion conditions of random bipartite graphs. The algorithm also applies to weighted independent sets: …
We consider the problem of sampling and approximately counting an arbitrary given motif $H$ in a graph $G$, where access to $G$ is given via queries: degree, neighbor, and pair, as well as uniform edge sample queries. Previous algorithms for these tasks were based on a decomposition of $H$ into a collection of odd cycles and stars, denoted $\mathcal{D}^*(H)=\{O_{k_1}, \ldots, O_{k_q}, S_{p_1}, \ldots, S_{p_\ell}\}$. These algorithms were shown to be optimal for the case where $H$ is a clique or an odd-length cycle, but no other lower bounds were known. We present a new algorithm for sampling a…
Let H be a graph, and let C_H(G) be the number of (subgraph isomorphic) copies of H contained in a graph G. We investigate the fundamental problem of estimating C_H(G). Previous results cover only a few specific instances of this general problem, for example, the case when H has degree at most one (monomer-dimer problem). In this paper, we present the first general subcase of the subgraph isomorphism counting problem which is almost always efficiently approximable. The results rely on a new graph decomposition technique. Informally, the decomposition is a labeling of the vertices such that eve…
Triangle counting is a fundamental technique in network analysis, that has received much attention in various input models. The vast majority of triangle counting algorithms are targeted to static graphs. Yet, many real-world graphs are directed and temporal, where edges come with timestamps. Temporal triangles yield much more information, since they account for both the graph topology and the timestamps. Temporal triangle counting has seen a few recent results, but there are varying definitions of temporal triangles. In all cases, temporal triangle patterns enforce constraints on the time int…
Vassilevska and Williams (STOC 2009) showed how to count simple paths on $k$ vertices and matchings on $k/2$ edges in an $n$-vertex graph in time $n^{k/2+O(1)}$. In the same year, two different algorithms with the same runtime were given by Koutis and Williams~(ICALP 2009), and Björklund \emph{et al.} (ESA 2009), via $n^{st/2+O(1)}$-time algorithms for counting $t$-tuples of pairwise disjoint sets drawn from a given family of $s$-sized subsets of an $n$-element universe. Shortly afterwards, Alon and Gutner (TALG 2010) showed that these problems have $Ω(n^{\lfloor st/2\rfloor})$ and $Ω(n^{\lflo…
In this paper we introduce a new approach for approximately counting in bounded degree systems with higher-order constraints. Our main result is an algorithm to approximately count the number of solutions to a CNF formula $Φ$ when the width is logarithmic in the maximum degree. This closes an exponential gap between the known upper and lower bounds. Moreover our algorithm extends straightforwardly to approximate sampling, which shows that under Lovász Local Lemma-like conditions it is not only possible to find a satisfying assignment, it is also possible to generate one approximately uniformly…
We give the first efficient algorithm to approximately count the number of solutions in the random $k$-SAT model when the density of the formula scales exponentially with $k$. The best previous counting algorithm for the permissive version of the model was due to Montanari and Shah and was based on the correlation decay method, which works up to densities $(1+o_k(1))\frac{2\log k}{k}$, the Gibbs uniqueness threshold for the model. Instead, our algorithm harnesses a recent technique by Moitra to work for random formulas. The main challenge in our setting is to account for the presence of high-d…
We address the problem of computing the distribution of induced connected subgraphs, aka \emph{graphlets} or \emph{motifs}, in large graphs. The current state-of-the-art algorithms estimate the motif counts via uniform sampling, by leveraging the color coding technique by Alon, Yuster and Zwick. In this work we extend the applicability of this approach, by introducing a set of algorithmic optimizations and techniques that reduce the running time and space usage of color coding and improve the accuracy of the counts. To this end, we first show how to optimize color coding to efficiently build a…
We give new algorithms based on Markov chains to sample and approximately count satisfying assignments to $k$-uniform CNF formulas where each variable appears at most $d$ times. For any $k$ and $d$ satisfying $kd<n^{o(1)}$ and $k\ge 20\log k + 20\log d + 60$, the new sampling algorithm runs in close to linear time, and the counting algorithm runs in close to quadratic time. Our approach is inspired by Moitra (JACM, 2019) which remarkably utilizes the Lovász local lemma in approximate counting. Our main technical contribution is to use the local lemma to bypass the connectivity barrier in tradi…
In this paper we study the problem of computing max-entropy distributions over a discrete set of objects subject to observed marginals. Interest in such distributions arises due to their applicability in areas such as statistical physics, economics, biology, information theory, machine learning, combinatorics and, more recently, approximation algorithms. A key difficulty in computing max-entropy distributions has been to show that they have polynomially-sized descriptions. We show that such descriptions exist under general conditions. Subsequently, we show how algorithms for (approximately) co…
We study the problem of approximately counting cliques and near cliques in a graph, where the access to the graph is only available through crawling its vertices; thus typically seeing only a small portion of it. This model, known as the random walk model or the neighborhood query model has been introduced recently and captures real-life scenarios in which the entire graph is too massive to be stored as a whole or be scanned entirely and sampling vertices independently is non-trivial in it. We introduce DeMEtRIS: Dense Motif Estimation through Random Incident Sampling. This method provides a s…
Chandrasekaran, Chertkov, Gamarnik, Shah, and Shin recently proved that the average number of independent sets of random regular graphs of size n and degree 3 approaches w^n for large n, where w is approximately 1.54563, consistent with the Bethe approximation. They also made the surprising conjecture that the fluctuations of the logarithm of the number of independent sets were only O(1) as n grew large, which would mean that the Bethe approximation is amazingly accurate for all 3-regular graphs. Here, I provide numerical evidence supporting this conjecture obtained from exact counts of indepe…
In this paper we study a natural generalization of both {\sc $k$-Path} and {\sc $k$-Tree} problems, namely, the {\sc Subgraph Isomorphism} problem. In the {\sc Subgraph Isomorphism} problem we are given two graphs $F$ and $G$ on $k$ and $n$ vertices respectively as an input, and the question is whether there exists a subgraph of $G$ isomorphic to $F$. We show that if the treewidth of $F$ is at most $t$, then there is a randomized algorithm for the {\sc Subgraph Isomorphism} problem running in time $\cO^*(2^k n^{2t})$. To do so, we associate a new multivariate {Homomorphism polynomial} of degre…
We introduce a new approach to computing an approximately maximum s-t flow in a capacitated, undirected graph. This flow is computed by solving a sequence of electrical flow problems. Each electrical flow is given by the solution of a system of linear equations in a Laplacian matrix, and thus may be approximately computed in nearly-linear time. Using this approach, we develop the fastest known algorithm for computing approximately maximum s-t flows. For a graph having n vertices and m edges, our algorithm computes a (1-ε)-approximately maximum s-t flow in time \tilde{O}(mn^{1/3} ε^{-11/3}). A …
Counting the number of ones in a binary stream is a common operation in database, information-retrieval, cryptographic and machine-learning applications. Most processors have dedicated instructions to count the number of ones in a word (e.g., popcnt on x64 processors). Maybe surprisingly, we show that a vectorized approach using SIMD instructions can be twice as fast as using the dedicated instructions on recent Intel processors. The benefits can be even greater for applications such as similarity measures (e.g., the Jaccard index) that require additional Boolean operations. Our approach has b…
We first show that the Traveling Salesman Problem in an n-vertex graph with average degree bounded by d can be solved in O*(2^{(1-\eps_d)n}) time and exponential space for a constant \eps_d depending only on d, where the O*-notation suppresses factors polynomial in the input size. Thus, we generalize the recent results of Bjorklund et al. [TALG 2012] on graphs of bounded degree. Then, we move to the problem of counting perfect matchings in a graph. We first present a simple algorithm for counting perfect matchings in an n-vertex graph in O*(2^{n/2}) time and polynomial space; our algorithm mat…
We study range-searching for colored objects, where one has to count (approximately) the number of colors present in a query range. The problems studied mostly involve orthogonal range-searching in two and three dimensions, and the dual setting of rectangle stabbing by points. We present optimal and near-optimal solutions for these problems. Most of the results are obtained via reductions to the approximate uncolored version, and improved data-structures for them. An additional contribution of this work is the introduction of nested shallow cuttings.
The problem of (approximately) counting the number of triangles in a graph is one of the basic problems in graph theory. In this paper we study the problem in the streaming model. We study the amount of memory required by a randomized algorithm to solve this problem. In case the algorithm is allowed one pass over the stream, we present a best possible lower bound of $Ω(m)$ for graphs $G$ with $m$ edges on $n$ vertices. If a constant number of passes is allowed, we show a lower bound of $Ω(m/T)$, $T$ the number of triangles. We match, in some sense, this lower bound with a 2-pass $O(m/T^{1/3})$…
Graphlet analysis is an approach to network analysis that is particularly popular in bioinformatics. We show how to set up a system of linear equations that relate the orbit counts and can be used in an algorithm that is significantly faster than the existing approaches based on direct enumeration of graphlets. The algorithm requires existence of a vertex with certain properties; we show that such vertex exists for graphlets of arbitrary size, except for complete graphs and $C_4$, which are treated separately. Empirical analysis of running time agrees with the theoretical results.
We revisit the classic basic counting problem in the distributed streaming model that was studied by Gibbons and Tirthapura (GT). In the solution for maintaining an $(ε,δ)$-estimate, as what GT's method does, we make the following new contributions: (1) For a bit stream of size $n$, where each bit has a probability at least $γ$ to be 1, we exponentially reduced the average total processing time from GT's $Θ(n \log(1/δ))$ to $O((1/(γε^2))(\log^2 n) \log(1/δ))$, thus providing the first sublinear-time streaming algorithm for this problem. (2) In addition to an overall much faster processing spee…
We consider algorithms for finding and counting small, fixed graphs in sparse host graphs. In the non-sparse setting, the parameters treedepth and treewidth play a crucial role in fast, constant-space and polynomial-space algorithms respectively. We discover two new parameters that we call matched treedepth and matched treewidth. We show that finding and counting patterns with low matched treedepth and low matched treewidth can be done asymptotically faster than the existing algorithms when the host graphs are sparse for many patterns. As an application to finding and counting fixed-size patte…
We present a simple sublinear-time algorithm for sampling an arbitrary subgraph $H$ \emph{exactly uniformly} from a graph $G$ with $m$ edges, to which the algorithm has access by performing the following types of queries: (1) degree queries, (2) neighbor queries, (3) pair queries and (4) edge sampling queries. The query complexity and running time of our algorithm are $\tilde{O}(\min\{m, \frac{m^{ρ(H)}}{\# H}\})$ and $\tilde{O}(\frac{m^{ρ(H)}}{\# H})$, respectively, where $ρ(H)$ is the fractional edge-cover of $H$ and $\# H$ is the number of copies of $H$ in $G$. For any clique on $r$ vertices…
We show a method resulting in the improvement of several polynomial-space, exponential-time algorithms. An instance of the problem Max (r,2)-CSP, or simply Max 2-CSP, is parametrized by the domain size r (often 2), the number of variables n (vertices in the constraint graph G), and the number of constraints m (edges in G). When G is cubic, and omitting sub-exponential terms here for clarity, we give an algorithm running in time r^((1/5)n) = r^((2/15)m); the previous best was r^((1/4)n) = r^((1/6)m). By known results, this improvement for the cubic case results in an algorithm running in time r…
We define a notion of isotropy for discrete set distributions. If $μ$ is a distribution over subsets $S$ of a ground set $[n]$, we say that $μ$ is in isotropic position if $P[e \in S]$ is the same for all $e\in [n]$. We design a new approximate sampling algorithm that leverages isotropy for the class of distributions $μ$ that have a log-concave generating polynomial; this class includes determinantal point processes, strongly Rayleigh distributions, and uniform distributions over matroid bases. We show that when $μ$ is in approximately isotropic position, the running time of our algorithm depe…
As engineered systems expand, become more interdependent, and operate in real-time, reliability assessment is indispensable to support investment and decision making. However, network reliability problems are known to be #P-complete, a computational complexity class largely believed to be intractable. The computational intractability of network reliability motivates our quest for reliable approximations. Based on their theoretical foundations, available methods can be grouped as follows: (i) exact or bounds, (ii) guarantee-less sampling, and (iii) probably approximately correct (PAC). Group (i…
I extend the methods in "Electrical Flows, Laplacian Systems, and Faster Approximation of Maximum Flow in Undirected Graphs, with Paul Christiano, Jonathan Kelner, Daniel Spielman, and Shang-Hua Teng" to directed graphs with a variation of the framework in the paper, which lead to an algorithm that approximately solves the directed max flow problem in nearly-linear time.
In the counting Graph Homomorphism problem (#GraphHom) the question is: Given graphs G,H, find the number of homomorphisms from G to H. This problem is generally #P-complete, moreover, Cygan et al. proved that unless the ETH is false there is no algorithm that solves this problem in time O(|V(H)|^{o(|V(G)|)}. This, however, does not rule out the possibility that faster algorithms exist for restricted problems of this kind. Wahlstrom proved that #GraphHom can be solved in plain exponential time, that is, in time k^{|V(G)|+V(H)|}\poly(|V(H)|,|V(G)|) provided H has clique width k. We generalize t…
We present new data structures for approximately counting the number of points in orthogonal range. There is a deterministic linear space data structure that supports updates in O(1) time and approximates the number of elements in a 1-D range up to an additive term $k^{1/c}$ in $O(\log \log U\cdot\log \log n)$ time, where $k$ is the number of elements in the answer, $U$ is the size of the universe and $c$ is an arbitrary fixed constant. We can estimate the number of points in a two-dimensional orthogonal range up to an additive term $ k^ρ$ in $O(\log \log U+ (1/ρ)\log\log n)$ time for any $ρ>0…
