We investigate the number of maximal independent set queries required to reconstruct the edges of a hidden graph. We show that randomised adaptive algorithms need at least $Ω(Δ^2 \log(n / Δ) / \log Δ)$ queries to reconstruct $n$-vertex graphs of maximum degree $Δ$ with success probability at least $1/2$, and we further improve this lower bound to $Ω(Δ^2 \log(n / Δ))$ for randomised non-adaptive algorithms. We also prove that deterministic non-adaptive algorithms require at least $Ω(Δ^3 \log n / \log Δ)$ queries.
This improves bounds of Konrad, O'Sullivan, and Traistaru, and answers one of their questions. The proof of the lower bound for deterministic non-adaptive algorithms relies on a connection to cover-free families, for which we also improve known bounds.
How efficiently can we find an unknown graph using distance queries between its vertices? We assume that the unknown graph is connected, unweighted, and has bounded degree. The goal is to find every edge in the graph. This problem admits a reconstruction algorithm based on multi-phase Voronoi-cell decomposition and using $\tilde O(n^{3/2})$ distance queries. In our work, we analyze a simple reconstruction algorithm. We show that, on random $Δ$-regular graphs, our algorithm uses $\tilde O(n)$ distance queries. As by-products, we can reconstruct those graphs using $O(\log^2 n)$ queries to an all…
We study the query complexity of exactly reconstructing a string from adaptive queries, such as substring, subsequence, and jumbled-index queries. Such problems have applications, e.g., in computational biology. We provide a number of new and improved bounds for exact string reconstruction for settings where either the string or the queries are "mixed-up". For example, we show that a periodic (i.e., "mixed-up") string, $S=p^kp'$, of smallest period $p$, where $|p'|<|p|$, can be reconstructed using $O(σ|p|+\lg n)$ substring queries, where $σ$ is the alphabet size, if $n=|S|$ is unknown. We also…
We consider the algorithmic task of computing a maximal autarky for a clause-set F, i.e., a partial assignment which satisfies every clause of F it touches, and where this property is destroyed by adding any non-empty set of further assignments. We employ SAT solvers as oracles, using various capabilities. Using the standard SAT oracle, log_2(n(F)) oracle calls suffice, where n(F) is the number of variables, but the drawback is that (translated) cardinality constraints are employed, which makes this approach less efficient in practice. Using an extended SAT oracle, motivated by the capabilitie…
We briefly report on a successful linear program reconstruction attack performed on a production statistical queries system and using a real dataset. The attack was deployed in test environment in the course of the Aircloak Challenge bug bounty program and is based on the reconstruction algorithm of Dwork, McSherry, and Talwar. We empirically evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithm and a related algorithm by Dinur and Nissim with various dataset sizes, error rates, and numbers of queries in a Gaussian noise setting.
The skyline of a set of points in the plane is the subset of maximal points, where a point $(x,y)$ is maximal if no other point $(x',y')$ satisfies $x'\ge x$ and $y'\ge Y$. We consider the problem of preprocessing a set $P$ of $n$ points into a space efficient static data structure supporting orthogonal skyline counting queries, i.e. given a query rectangle $R$ to report the size of the skyline of $P$ intersected with $R$. We present a data structure for storing n points with integer coordinates having query time $O(\lg n/\lg\lg n)$ and space usage $O(n)$. The model of computation is a unit co…
How efficiently can we find an unknown graph using distance or shortest path queries between its vertices? Let $G = (V,E)$ be an unweighted, connected graph of bounded degree. The edge set $E$ is initially unknown, and the graph can be accessed using a \emph{distance oracle}, which receives a pair of vertices $(u,v)$ and returns the distance between $u$ and $v$. In the \emph{verification} problem, we are given a hypothetical graph $\hat G = (V,\hat E)$ and want to check whether $G$ is equal to $\hat G$. We analyze a natural greedy algorithm and prove that it uses $n^{1+o(1)}$ distance queries.…
We present a randomized Local Computation Algorithm (LCA) with query complexity $poly(Δ) \cdot \log n$ for the Maximal Independent Set (MIS) problem. That is, the algorithm determines whether each node is in the computed MIS or not using $poly(Δ) \cdot \log n$ queries to the adjacency lists of the graph, with high probability, and this can be done for different nodes simultaneously and independently. Here $Δ$ and $n$ denote the maximum degree and the number of nodes. This algorithm resolves a key open problem in the study of local computations and sublinear algorithms (attributed to Rubinfeld)…
We characterize the complexity of minimizing $\max_{i\in[N]} f_i(x)$ for convex, Lipschitz functions $f_1,\ldots, f_N$. For non-smooth functions, existing methods require $O(Nε^{-2})$ queries to a first-order oracle to compute an $ε$-suboptimal point and $\tilde{O}(Nε^{-1})$ queries if the $f_i$ are $O(1/ε)$-smooth. We develop methods with improved complexity bounds of $\tilde{O}(Nε^{-2/3} + ε^{-8/3})$ in the non-smooth case and $\tilde{O}(Nε^{-2/3} + \sqrt{N}ε^{-1})$ in the $O(1/ε)$-smooth case. Our methods consist of a recently proposed ball optimization oracle acceleration algorithm (which …
In this paper we study the problem of fully dynamic maximal matching with lookahead. In a fully dynamic $n$-vertex graph setting, we have to handle updates (insertions and removals of edges), and answer queries regarding the current graph, preferably with a better time bound than that when running the trivial deterministic algorithm with worst-case time of $O(m)$ (where $m$ is the all-time maximum number of the edges) and recompute the matching from scratch each time a query arrives. We show that a maximal matching can be maintained in an (undirected) general graph with a deterministic amortiz…
The longest common extension (LCE) of two indices in a string is the length of the longest identical substrings starting at these two indices. The LCE problem asks to preprocess a string into a compact data structure that supports fast LCE queries. In this paper we generalize the LCE problem to trees and suggest a few applications of LCE in trees to tries and XML databases. Given a labeled and rooted tree $T$ of size $n$, the goal is to preprocess $T$ into a compact data structure that support the following LCE queries between subpaths and subtrees in $T$. Let $v_1$, $v_2$, $w_1$, and $w_2$ be…
In this paper we present a randomized algorithm for computing the collection of maximal layers for a point set in $E^{k}$ ($k = f(n)$). The input to our algorithm is a point set $P = \{p_1,...,p_n\}$ with $p_i \in E^{k}$. The proposed algorithm achieves a runtime of $O\left(kn^{2 - {1 \over \log{k}} + \log_k{\left(1 + {2 \over {k+1}}\right)}}\log{n}\right)$ when $P$ is a random order and a runtime of $O(k^2 n^{3/2 + (\log_{k}{(k-1)})/2}\log{n})$ for an arbitrary $P$. Both bounds hold in expectation. Additionally, the run time is bounded by $O(kn^2)$ in the worst case. This is the first non-tri…
We study the non-overlapping indexing problem: Given a text T, preprocess it so that you can answer queries of the form: given a pattern P, report the maximal set of non-overlapping occurrences of P in T. A generalization of this problem is the range non-overlapping indexing where in addition we are given two indexes i,j to report the maximal set of non-overlapping occurrences between these two indexes. We suggest new solutions for these problems. For the non-overlapping problem our solution uses O(n) space with query time of O(m + occ_{NO}). For the range non-overlapping problem we propose a …
We study the problem of finding a spanning forest in an undirected, $n$-vertex multi-graph under two basic query models. One is the Linear query model which are linear measurements on the incidence vector induced by the edges; the other is the weaker OR query model which only reveals whether a given subset of plausible edges is empty or not. At the heart of our study lies a fundamental problem which we call the {\em single element recovery} problem: given a non-negative real vector $x$ in $N$ dimension, return a single element $x_j > 0$ from the support. Queries can be made in rounds, and our …
We study the problem of estimating the size of maximum matching and minimum vertex cover in sublinear time. Denoting the number of vertices by $n$ and the average degree in the graph by $\bar{d}$, we obtain the following results for both problems: * A multiplicative $(2+ε)$-approximation that takes $\tilde{O}(n/ε^2)$ time using adjacency list queries. * A multiplicative-additive $(2, εn)$-approximation in $\tilde{O}((\bar{d} + 1)/ε^2)$ time using adjacency list queries. * A multiplicative-additive $(2, εn)$-approximation in $\tilde{O}(n/ε^{3})$ time using adjacency matrix queries. All three re…
An ancestry labeling scheme assigns labels (bit strings) to the nodes of rooted trees such that ancestry queries between any two nodes in a tree can be answered merely by looking at their corresponding labels. The quality of an ancestry labeling scheme is measured by its label size, that is the maximal number of bits in a label of a tree node. In addition to its theoretical appeal, the design of efficient ancestry labeling schemes is motivated by applications in web search engines. For this purpose, even small improvements in the label size are important. In fact, the literature about this top…
