Given tensors $\boldsymbol{\mathscr{A}}, \boldsymbol{\mathscr{B}}, \boldsymbol{\mathscr{C}}$ of size $m \times 1 \times n$, $m \times p \times 1$, and $1\times p \times n$, respectively, their Bhattacharya-Mesner (BM) product will result in a third order tensor of dimension $m \times p \times n$ and BM-rank of 1 (Mesner and Bhattacharya, 1990). Thus, if a third-order tensor can be written as a sum of a small number of such BM-rank 1 terms, this BM-decomposition (BMD) offers an implicitly compressed representation of the tensor. Therefore, in this paper, we give a generative model which illustrates that spatio-temporal video data can be expected to have low BM-rank. Then, we discuss non-uniqueness properties of the BMD and give an improved bound on the BM-rank of a third-order tensor. We present and study properties of an iterative algorithm for computing an approximate BMD, including convergence behavior and appropriate choices for starting guesses that allow for the decomposition of our spatial-temporal data into stationary and non-stationary components. Several numerical experiments show the impressive ability of our BMD algorithm to extract important temporal information from video data while simultaneously compressing the data. In particular, we compare our approach with dynamic mode decomposition (DMD): first, we show how the matrix-based DMD can be reinterpreted in tensor BMP form, then we explain why the low BM-rank decomposition can produce results with superior compression properties while simultaneously providing better separation of stationary and non-stationary features in the data. We conclude with a comparison of our low BM-rank decomposition to two other tensor decompositions, CP and the t-SVDM.
We study the tolerant testing problem for high-dimensional samplers. Given as input two samplers $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{Q}$ over the $n$-dimensional space $\{0,1\}^n$, and two parameters $\varepsilon_2 > \varepsilon_1$, the goal of tolerant testing is to test whether the distributions generated by $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{Q}$ are $\varepsilon_1$-close or $\varepsilon_2$-far. Since exponential lower bounds (in $n$) are known for the problem in the standard sampling model, research has focused on models where one can draw \textit{conditional} samples. Among these models, \textit{subcube conditioning} ($\mathsf{SUBCOND}$), which allows conditioning on arbitrary subcubes of the domain, holds the promise of widespread adoption in practice owing to its ability to capture the natural behavior of samplers in constrained domains. To translate the promise into practice, we need to overcome two crucial roadblocks for tests based on $\mathsf{SUBCOND}$: the prohibitively large number of queries ($\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^5/\varepsilon_2^5)$) and limitation to non-tolerant testing (i.e., $\varepsilon_1 = 0$). The primary contribution of this work is to overcome the above challenges: we design a new tolerant testing methodology (i.e., $\varepsilon_1 \geq 0$) that allows us to significantly improve the upper bound to $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(n^3/(\varepsilon_2-\varepsilon_1)^5)$.
In the misspecified spectral algorithms problem, researchers usually assume the underground true function $f_{\rho}^{*} \in [\mathcal{H}]^{s}$, a less-smooth interpolation space of a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) $\mathcal{H}$ for some $s\in (0,1)$. The existing minimax optimal results require $\|f_{\rho}^{*}\|_{L^{\infty}}<\infty$ which implicitly requires $s > \alpha_{0}$ where $\alpha_{0}\in (0,1)$ is the embedding index, a constant depending on $\mathcal{H}$. Whether the spectral algorithms are optimal for all $s\in (0,1)$ is an outstanding problem lasting for years. In this paper, we show that spectral algorithms are minimax optimal for any $\alpha_{0}-\frac{1}{\beta} < s < 1$, where $\beta$ is the eigenvalue decay rate of $\mathcal{H}$. We also give several classes of RKHSs whose embedding index satisfies $ \alpha_0 = \frac{1}{\beta} $. Thus, the spectral algorithms are minimax optimal for all $s\in (0,1)$ on these RKHSs.
We introduce TeraHAC, a $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) algorithm which scales to trillion-edge graphs. Our algorithm is based on a new approach to computing $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate HAC, which is a novel combination of the nearest-neighbor chain algorithm and the notion of $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate HAC. Our approach allows us to partition the graph among multiple machines and make significant progress in computing the clustering within each partition before any communication with other partitions is needed. We evaluate TeraHAC on a number of real-world and synthetic graphs of up to 8 trillion edges. We show that TeraHAC requires over 100x fewer rounds compared to previously known approaches for computing HAC. It is up to 8.3x faster than SCC, the state-of-the-art distributed algorithm for hierarchical clustering, while achieving 1.16x higher quality. In fact, TeraHAC essentially retains the quality of the celebrated HAC algorithm while significantly improving the running time.
We consider the Max-$3$-Section problem, where we are given an undirected graph $ G=(V,E)$ equipped with non-negative edge weights $w :E\rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$ and the goal is to find a partition of $V$ into three equisized parts while maximizing the total weight of edges crossing between different parts. Max-$3$-Section is closely related to other well-studied graph partitioning problems, e.g., Max-$k$-Cut, Max-$3$-Cut, and Max-Bisection. We present a polynomial time algorithm achieving an approximation of $ 0.795$, that improves upon the previous best known approximation of $ 0.673$. The requirement of multiple parts that have equal sizes renders Max-$3$-Section much harder to cope with compared to, e.g., Max-Bisection. We show a new algorithm that combines the existing approach of Lassere hierarchy along with a random cut strategy that suffices to give our result.
Let $ \bbB_n =\frac{1}{n}(\bbR_n + \bbT^{1/2}_n \bbX_n)(\bbR_n + \bbT^{1/2}_n \bbX_n)^* $ where $ \bbX_n $ is a $ p \times n $ matrix with independent standardized random variables, $ \bbR_n $ is a $ p \times n $ non-random matrix, representing the information, and $ \bbT_{n} $ is a $ p \times p $ non-random nonnegative definite Hermitian matrix. Under some conditions on $ \bbR_n \bbR_n^* $ and $ \bbT_n $, it has been proved that for any closed interval outside the support of the limit spectral distribution, with probability one there will be no eigenvalues falling in this interval for all $ p $ sufficiently large. The purpose of this paper is to carry on with the study of the support of the limit spectral distribution, and we show that there is an exact separation phenomenon: with probability one, the proper number of eigenvalues lie on either side of these intervals.
A $c$-labeling $\phi: V(G) \rightarrow \{1, 2, \hdots, c \}$ of graph $G$ is distinguishing if, for every non-trivial automorphism $\pi$ of $G$, there is some vertex $v$ so that $\phi(v) \neq \phi(\pi(v))$. The distinguishing number of $G$, $D(G)$, is the smallest $c$ such that $G$ has a distinguishing $c$-labeling. We consider a compact version of Tyshkevich's graph decomposition theorem where trivial components are maximally combined to form a complete graph or a graph of isolated vertices. Suppose the compact canonical decomposition of $G$ is $G_{k} \circ G_{k-1} \circ \cdots \circ G_1 \circ G_0$. We prove that $\phi$ is a distinguishing labeling of $G$ if and only if $\phi$ is a distinguishing labeling of $G_i$ when restricted to $V(G_i)$ for $i = 0, \hdots, k$. Thus, $D(G) = \max \{D(G_i), i = 0, \hdots, k \}$. We then present an algorithm that computes the distinguishing number of a unigraph in linear time.
A function $f : U \to \{0,\ldots,n-1\}$ is a minimal perfect hash function for a set $S \subseteq U$ of size $n$, if $f$ bijectively maps $S$ into the first $n$ natural numbers. These functions are important for many practical applications in computing, such as search engines, computer networks, and databases. Several algorithms have been proposed to build minimal perfect hash functions that: scale well to large sets, retain fast evaluation time, and take very little space, e.g., 2 - 3 bits/key. PTHash is one such algorithm, achieving very fast evaluation in compressed space, typically several times faster than other techniques. In this work, we propose a new construction algorithm for PTHash enabling: (1) multi-threading, to either build functions more quickly or more space-efficiently, and (2) external-memory processing to scale to inputs much larger than the available internal memory. Only few other algorithms in the literature share these features, despite of their big practical impact. We conduct an extensive experimental assessment on large real-world string collections and show that, with respect to other techniques, PTHash is competitive in construction time and space consumption, but retains 2 - 6$\times$ better lookup time.
We show that for any permutation $\pi$ there exists an integer $k_{\pi}$ such that every permutation avoiding $\pi$ as a pattern is a product of at most $k_{\pi}$ separable permutations. In other words, every strict class $\mathcal C$ of permutations is contained in a bounded power of the class of separable permutations. This factorisation can be computed in linear time, for any fixed $\pi$. The central tool for our result is a notion of width of permutations, introduced by Guillemot and Marx [SODA '14] to efficiently detect patterns, and later generalised to graphs and matrices under the name of twin-width. Specifically, our factorisation is inspired by the decomposition used in the recent result that graphs with bounded twin-width are polynomially $\chi$-bounded. As an application, we show that there is a fixed class $\mathcal C$ of graphs of bounded twin-width such that every class of bounded twin-width is a first-order transduction of $\mathcal C$.
A dictionary data structure maintains a set of at most $n$ keys from the universe $[U]$ under key insertions and deletions, such that given a query $x \in [U]$, it returns if $x$ is in the set. Some variants also store values associated to the keys such that given a query $x$, the value associated to $x$ is returned when $x$ is in the set. This fundamental data structure problem has been studied for six decades since the introduction of hash tables in 1953. A hash table occupies $O(n\log U)$ bits of space with constant time per operation in expectation. There has been a vast literature on improving its time and space usage. The state-of-the-art dictionary by Bender, Farach-Colton, Kuszmaul, Kuszmaul and Liu [BFCK+22] has space consumption close to the information-theoretic optimum, using a total of \[ \log\binom{U}{n}+O(n\log^{(k)} n) \] bits, while supporting all operations in $O(k)$ time, for any parameter $k \leq \log^* n$. The term $O(\log^{(k)} n) = O(\underbrace{\log\cdots\log}_k n)$ is referred to as the wasted bits per key. In this paper, we prove a matching cell-probe lower bound: For $U=n^{1+\Theta(1)}$, any dictionary with $O(\log^{(k)} n)$ wasted bits per key must have expected operational time $\Omega(k)$, in the cell-probe model with word-size $w=\Theta(\log U)$. Furthermore, if a dictionary stores values of $\Theta(\log U)$ bits, we show that regardless of the query time, it must have $\Omega(k)$ expected update time. It is worth noting that this is the first cell-probe lower bound on the trade-off between space and update time for general data structures.
We show that the minimax sample complexity for estimating the pseudo-spectral gap $\gamma_{\mathsf{ps}}$ of an ergodic Markov chain in constant multiplicative error is of the order of $$\tilde{\Theta}\left( \frac{1}{\gamma_{\mathsf{ps}} \pi_{\star}} \right),$$ where $\pi_\star$ is the minimum stationary probability, recovering the known bound in the reversible setting for estimating the absolute spectral gap [Hsu et al., 2019], and resolving an open problem of Wolfer and Kontorovich [2019]. Furthermore, we strengthen the known empirical procedure by making it fully-adaptive to the data, thinning the confidence intervals and reducing the computational complexity. Along the way, we derive new properties of the pseudo-spectral gap and introduce the notion of a reversible dilation of a stochastic matrix.