Hamiltonian cycles in graphs were first studied in the 1850s. Since then, an impressive amount of research has been dedicated to identifying classes of graphs that allow Hamiltonian cycles, and to related questions. The corresponding decision problem, that asks whether a given graph is Hamiltonian (i.\,e.\ admits a Hamiltonian cycle), is one of Karp's famous NP-complete problems. In this paper we study graphs of bounded degree that are \emph{far} from being Hamiltonian, where a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is \emph{far} from being Hamiltonian, if modifying a constant fraction of $n$ edges is necessary to make $G$ Hamiltonian. We give an explicit deterministic construction of a class of graphs of bounded degree that are locally Hamiltonian, but (globally) far from being Hamiltonian. Here, \emph{locally Hamiltonian} means that every subgraph induced by the neighbourhood of a small vertex set appears in some Hamiltonian graph. More precisely, we obtain graphs which differ in $\Theta(n)$ edges from any Hamiltonian graph, but non-Hamiltonicity cannot be detected in the neighbourhood of $o(n)$ vertices. Our class of graphs yields a class of hard instances for one-sided error property testers with linear query complexity. It is known that any property tester (even with two-sided error) requires a linear number of queries to test Hamiltonicity (Yoshida, Ito, 2010). This is proved via a randomised construction of hard instances. In contrast, our construction is deterministic. So far only very few deterministic constructions of hard instances for property testing are known. We believe that our construction may lead to future insights in graph theory and towards a characterisation of the properties that are testable in the bounded-degree model.
The approximate uniform sampling of graph realizations with a given degree sequence is an everyday task in several social science, computer science, engineering etc. projects. One approach is using Markov chains. The best available current result about the well-studied switch Markov chain is that it is rapidly mixing on P-stable degree sequences (see DOI:10.1016/j.ejc.2021.103421). The switch Markov chain does not change any degree sequence. However, there are cases where degree intervals are specified rather than a single degree sequence. (A natural scenario where this problem arises is in hypothesis testing on social networks that are only partially observed.) Rechner, Strowick, and M\"uller-Hannemann introduced in 2018 the notion of degree interval Markov chain which uses three (separately well-studied) local operations (switch, hinge-flip and toggle), and employing on degree sequence realizations where any two sequences under scrutiny have very small coordinate-wise distance. Recently Amanatidis and Kleer published a beautiful paper (arXiv:2110.09068), showing that the degree interval Markov chain is rapidly mixing if the sequences are coming from a system of very thin intervals which are centered not far from a regular degree sequence. In this paper we extend substantially their result, showing that the degree interval Markov chain is rapidly mixing if the intervals are centred at P-stable degree sequences.
Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) are one of the most popular architectures that are used to solve classification problems accompanied by graphical information. We present a rigorous theoretical understanding of the effects of graph convolutions in multi-layer networks. We study these effects through the node classification problem of a non-linearly separable Gaussian mixture model coupled with a stochastic block model. First, we show that a single graph convolution expands the regime of the distance between the means where multi-layer networks can classify the data by a factor of at least $1/\sqrt[4]{\mathbb{E}{\rm deg}}$, where $\mathbb{E}{\rm deg}$ denotes the expected degree of a node. Second, we show that with a slightly stronger graph density, two graph convolutions improve this factor to at least $1/\sqrt[4]{n}$, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph. Finally, we provide both theoretical and empirical insights into the performance of graph convolutions placed in different combinations among the layers of a network, concluding that the performance is mutually similar for all combinations of the placement. We present extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world data that illustrate our results.
We describe a polynomial-time algorithm which, given a graph $G$ with treewidth $t$, approximates the pathwidth of $G$ to within a ratio of $O(t\sqrt{\log t})$. This is the first algorithm to achieve an $f(t)$-approximation for some function $f$. Our approach builds on the following key insight: every graph with large pathwidth has large treewidth or contains a subdivision of a large complete binary tree. Specifically, we show that every graph with pathwidth at least $th+2$ has treewidth at least $t$ or contains a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height $h+1$. The bound $th+2$ is best possible up to a multiplicative constant. This result was motivated by, and implies (with $c=2$), the following conjecture of Kawarabayashi and Rossman (SODA'18): there exists a universal constant $c$ such that every graph with pathwidth $\Omega(k^c)$ has treewidth at least $k$ or contains a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height $k$. Our main technical algorithm takes a graph $G$ and some (not necessarily optimal) tree decomposition of $G$ of width $t'$ in the input, and it computes in polynomial time an integer $h$, a certificate that $G$ has pathwidth at least $h$, and a path decomposition of $G$ of width at most $(t'+1)h+1$. The certificate is closely related to (and implies) the existence of a subdivision of a complete binary tree of height $h$. The approximation algorithm for pathwidth is then obtained by combining this algorithm with the approximation algorithm of Feige, Hajiaghayi, and Lee (STOC'05) for treewidth.
Approximate-message passing (AMP) algorithms have become an important element of high-dimensional statistical inference, mostly due to their adaptability and concentration properties, the state evolution (SE) equations. This is demonstrated by the growing number of new iterations proposed for increasingly complex problems, ranging from multi-layer inference to low-rank matrix estimation with elaborate priors. In this paper, we address the following questions: is there a structure underlying all AMP iterations that unifies them in a common framework? Can we use such a structure to give a modular proof of state evolution equations, adaptable to new AMP iterations without reproducing each time the full argument ? We propose an answer to both questions, showing that AMP instances can be generically indexed by an oriented graph. This enables to give a unified interpretation of these iterations, independent from the problem they solve, and a way of composing them arbitrarily. We then show that all AMP iterations indexed by such a graph admit rigorous SE equations, extending the reach of previous proofs, and proving a number of recent heuristic derivations of those equations. Our proof naturally includes non-separable functions and we show how existing refinements, such as spatial coupling or matrix-valued variables, can be combined with our framework.
In this work, we introduce a novel approach to formulating an artificial viscosity for shock capturing in nonlinear hyperbolic systems by utilizing the property that the solutions of hyperbolic conservation laws are not reversible in time in the vicinity of shocks. The proposed approach does not require any additional governing equations or a priori knowledge of the hyperbolic system in question, is independent of the mesh and approximation order, and requires the use of only one tunable parameter. The primary novelty is that the resulting artificial viscosity is unique for each component of the conservation law which is advantageous for systems in which some components exhibit discontinuities while others do not. The efficacy of the method is shown in numerical experiments of multi-dimensional hyperbolic conservation laws such as nonlinear transport, Euler equations, and ideal magnetohydrodynamics using a high-order discontinuous spectral element method on unstructured grids.
We study the problem of testing whether a function $f: \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}$ is a polynomial of degree at most $d$ in the \emph{distribution-free} testing model. Here, the distance between functions is measured with respect to an unknown distribution $\mathcal{D}$ over $\mathbb{R}^n$ from which we can draw samples. In contrast to previous work, we do not assume that $\mathcal{D}$ has finite support. We design a tester that given query access to $f$, and sample access to $\mathcal{D}$, makes $(d/\varepsilon)^{O(1)}$ many queries to $f$, accepts with probability $1$ if $f$ is a polynomial of degree $d$, and rejects with probability at least $2/3$ if every degree-$d$ polynomial $P$ disagrees with $f$ on a set of mass at least $\varepsilon$ with respect to $\mathcal{D}$. Our result also holds under mild assumptions when we receive only a polynomial number of bits of precision for each query to $f$, or when $f$ can only be queried on rational points representable using a logarithmic number of bits. Along the way, we prove a new stability theorem for multivariate polynomials that may be of independent interest.
A natural way of increasing our understanding of NP-complete graph problems is to restrict the input to a special graph class. Classes of $H$-free graphs, that is, graphs that do not contain some graph $H$ as an induced subgraph, have proven to be an ideal testbed for such a complexity study. However, if the forbidden graph $H$ contains a cycle or claw, then these problems often stay NP-complete. A recent complexity study on the $k$-Colouring problem shows that we may still obtain tractable results if we also bound the diameter of the $H$-free input graph. We continue this line of research by initiating a complexity study on the impact of bounding the diameter for a variety of classical vertex partitioning problems restricted to $H$-free graphs. We prove that bounding the diameter does not help for Independent Set, but leads to new tractable cases for problems closely related to 3-Colouring. That is, we show that Near-Bipartiteness, Independent Feedback Vertex Set, Independent Odd Cycle Transversal, Acyclic 3-Colouring and Star 3-Colouring are all polynomial-time solvable for chair-free graphs of bounded diameter. To obtain these results we exploit a new structural property of 3-colourable chair-free graphs.
It is shown, with two sets of indicators that separately load on two distinct factors, independent of one another conditional on the past, that if it is the case that at least one of the factors causally affects the other, then, in many settings, the process will converge to a factor model in which a single factor will suffice to capture the covariance structure among the indicators. Factor analysis with one wave of data can then not distinguish between factor models with a single factor versus those with two factors that are causally related. Therefore, unless causal relations between factors can be ruled out a priori, alleged empirical evidence from one-wave factor analysis for a single factor still leaves open the possibilities of a single factor or of two factors that causally affect one another. The implications for interpreting the factor structure of psychological scales, such as self-report scales for anxiety and depression, or for happiness and purpose, are discussed. The results are further illustrated through simulations to gain insight into the practical implications of the results in more realistic settings prior to the convergence of the processes. Some further generalizations to an arbitrary number of underlying factors are noted.
Holonomic functions play an essential role in Computer Algebra since they allow the application of many symbolic algorithms. Among all algorithmic attempts to find formulas for power series, the holonomic property remains the most important requirement to be satisfied by the function under consideration. The targeted functions mainly summarize that of meromorphic functions. However, expressions like $\tan(z)$, $z/(\exp(z)-1)$, $\sec(z)$, etc., particularly, reciprocals, quotients and compositions of holonomic functions, are generally not holonomic. Therefore their power series are inaccessible by the holonomic framework. From the mathematical dictionaries, one can observe that most of the known closed-form formulas of non-holonomic power series involve another sequence whose evaluation depends on some finite summations. In the case of $\tan(z)$ and $\sec(z)$ the corresponding sequences are the Bernoulli and Euler numbers, respectively. Thus providing a symbolic approach that yields complete representations when linear summations for power series coefficients of non-holonomic functions appear, might be seen as a step forward towards the representation of non-holonomic power series. By adapting the method of ansatz with undetermined coefficients, we build an algorithm that computes least-order quadratic differential equations with polynomial coefficients for a large class of non-holonomic functions. A differential equation resulting from this procedure is converted into a recurrence equation by applying the Cauchy product formula and rewriting powers into polynomials and derivatives into shifts. Finally, using enough initial values we are able to give normal form representations to characterize several non-holonomic power series and prove non-trivial identities. We discuss this algorithm and its implementation for Maple 2022.
We recall some of the history of the information-theoretic approach to deriving core results in probability theory and indicate parts of the recent resurgence of interest in this area with current progress along several interesting directions. Then we give a new information-theoretic proof of a finite version of de Finetti's classical representation theorem for finite-valued random variables. We derive an upper bound on the relative entropy between the distribution of the first $k$ in a sequence of $n$ exchangeable random variables, and an appropriate mixture over product distributions. The mixing measure is characterised as the law of the empirical measure of the original sequence, and de Finetti's result is recovered as a corollary. The proof is nicely motivated by the Gibbs conditioning principle in connection with statistical mechanics, and it follows along an appealing sequence of steps. The technical estimates required for these steps are obtained via the use of a collection of combinatorial tools known within information theory as `the method of types.'