We consider the classic $k$-center problem in a parallel setting, on the low-local-space Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model, with local space per machine of $\mathcal{O}(n^{\delta})$, where $\delta \in (0,1)$ is an arbitrary constant. As a central clustering problem, the $k$-center problem has been studied extensively. Still, until very recently, all parallel MPC algorithms have been requiring $\Omega(k)$ or even $\Omega(k n^{\delta})$ local space per machine. While this setting covers the case of small values of $k$, for a large number of clusters these algorithms require large local memory, making them poorly scalable. The case of large $k$, $k \ge \Omega(n^{\delta})$, has been considered recently for the low-local-space MPC model by Bateni et al. (2021), who gave an $\mathcal{O}(\log \log n)$-round MPC algorithm that produces $k(1+o(1))$ centers whose cost has multiplicative approximation of $\mathcal{O}(\log\log\log n)$. In this paper we extend the algorithm of Bateni et al. and design a low-local-space MPC algorithm that in $\mathcal{O}(\log\log n)$ rounds returns a clustering with $k(1+o(1))$ clusters that is an $\mathcal{O}(\log^*n)$-approximation for $k$-center.
Can we recover the hidden parameters of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) by probing its input-output mapping? We propose a systematic method, called `Expand-and-Cluster' that needs only the number of hidden layers and the activation function of the probed ANN to identify all network parameters. In the expansion phase, we train a series of networks of increasing size using the probed data of the ANN as a teacher. Expansion stops when a minimal loss is consistently reached in networks of a given size. In the clustering phase, weight vectors of the expanded students are clustered, which allows structured pruning of superfluous neurons in a principled way. We find that an overparameterization of a factor four is sufficient to reliably identify the minimal number of neurons and to retrieve the original network parameters in $80\%$ of tasks across a family of 150 toy problems of variable difficulty. Furthermore, shallow and deep teacher networks trained on MNIST data can be identified with less than $5\%$ overhead in the neuron number. Thus, while direct training of a student network with a size identical to that of the teacher is practically impossible because of the highly non-convex loss function, training with mild overparameterization followed by clustering and structured pruning correctly identifies the target network.
We consider the problem of inferring an unknown number of clusters in replicated multinomial data. Under a model based clustering point of view, this task can be treated by estimating finite mixtures of multinomial distributions with or without covariates. Both Maximum Likelihood (ML) as well as Bayesian estimation are taken into account. Under a Maximum Likelihood approach, we provide an Expectation--Maximization (EM) algorithm which exploits a careful initialization procedure combined with a ridge--stabilized implementation of the Newton--Raphson method in the M--step. Under a Bayesian setup, a stochastic gradient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm embedded within a prior parallel tempering scheme is devised. The number of clusters is selected according to the Integrated Completed Likelihood criterion in the ML approach and estimating the number of non-empty components in overfitting mixture models in the Bayesian case. Our method is illustrated in simulated data and applied to two real datasets. An R package is available at //github.com/mqbssppe/multinomialLogitMix.
We study the top-$k$ selection problem under the differential privacy model: $m$ items are rated according to votes of a set of clients. We consider a setting in which algorithms can retrieve data via a sequence of accesses, each either a random access or a sorted access; the goal is to minimize the total number of data accesses. Our algorithm requires only $O(\sqrt{mk})$ expected accesses: to our knowledge, this is the first sublinear data-access upper bound for this problem. Our analysis also shows that the well-known exponential mechanism requires only $O(\sqrt{m})$ expected accesses. Accompanying this, we develop the first lower bounds for the problem, in three settings: only random accesses; only sorted accesses; a sequence of accesses of either kind. We show that, to avoid $\Omega(m)$ access cost, supporting *both* kinds of access is necessary, and that in this case our algorithm's access cost is optimal.
The aim of this paper is to find the numerical solutions of the second order linear and nonlinear differential equations with Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin boundary conditions. We use the Bernoulli polynomials as linear combination to the approximate solutions of 2nd order boundary value problems. Here the Bernoulli polynomials over the interval [0, 1] are chosen as trial functions so that care has been taken to satisfy the corresponding homogeneous form of the Dirichlet boundary conditions in the Galerkin weighted residual method. In addition to that the given differential equation over arbitrary finite domain [a, b] and the boundary conditions are converted into its equivalent form over the interval [0, 1]. All the formulas are verified by considering numerical examples. The approximate solutions are compared with the exact solutions, and also with the solutions of the existing methods. A reliable good accuracy is obtained in all cases.
With contemporary data sets becoming too large to analyze the data directly, various forms of aggregated data are becoming common. The original individual data are points, but after aggregation, the observations are interval-valued (e.g.). While some researchers simply analyze the set of averages of the observations by aggregated class, it is easily established that approach ignores much of the information in the original data set. The initial theoretical work for interval-valued data was that of Le-Rademacher and Billard (2011), but those results were limited to estimation of the mean and variance of a single variable only. This article seeks to redress the limitation of their work by deriving the maximum likelihood estimator for the all important covariance statistic, a basic requirement for numerous methodologies, such as regression, principal components, and canonical analyses. Asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are established. The Le-Rademacher and Billard results emerge as special cases of our wider derivations.
A \emph{star coloring} of a graph $G$ is a proper vertex-coloring such that no path on four vertices is $2$-colored. The minimum number of colors required to obtain a star coloring of a graph $G$ is called star chromatic number and it is denoted by $\chi_s(G)$. A graph $G$ is called $k$-critical if $\chi_s(G)=k$ and $\chi_s(G -e) < \chi_s(G)$ for every edge $e \in E(G)$. In this paper, we give a characterization of 3-critical, $(n-1)$-critical and $(n-2)$-critical graphs with respect to star coloring, where $n$ denotes the number of vertices of $G$. We also give upper and lower bounds on the minimum number of edges in $(n-1)$-critical and $(n-2)$-critical graphs.
We propose statistically robust and computationally efficient linear learning methods in the high-dimensional batch setting, where the number of features $d$ may exceed the sample size $n$. We employ, in a generic learning setting, two algorithms depending on whether the considered loss function is gradient-Lipschitz or not. Then, we instantiate our framework on several applications including vanilla sparse, group-sparse and low-rank matrix recovery. This leads, for each application, to efficient and robust learning algorithms, that reach near-optimal estimation rates under heavy-tailed distributions and the presence of outliers. For vanilla $s$-sparsity, we are able to reach the $s\log (d)/n$ rate under heavy-tails and $\eta$-corruption, at a computational cost comparable to that of non-robust analogs. We provide an efficient implementation of our algorithms in an open-source $\mathtt{Python}$ library called $\mathtt{linlearn}$, by means of which we carry out numerical experiments which confirm our theoretical findings together with a comparison to other recent approaches proposed in the literature.
State-of-the-art parallel sorting algorithms for distributed-memory architectures are based on computing a balanced partitioning via sampling and histogramming. By finding samples that partition the sorted keys into evenly-sized chunks, these algorithms minimize the number of communication rounds required. Histogramming (computing positions of samples) guides sampling, enabling a decrease in the overall number of samples collected. We derive lower and upper bounds on the number of sampling/histogramming rounds required to compute a balanced partitioning. We improve on prior results to demonstrate that when using $p$ processors, $O(\log^* p)$ rounds with $O(p/\log^* p)$ samples per round suffice. We match that with a lower bound that shows that any algorithm with $O(p)$ samples per round requires at least $\Omega(\log^* p)$ rounds. Additionally, we prove the $\Omega(p \log p)$ samples lower bound for one round, thus proving that existing one round algorithms: sample sort, AMS sort and HSS have optimal sample size complexity. To derive the lower bound, we propose a hard randomized input distribution and apply classical results from the distribution theory of runs.
We consider the problem of online interval scheduling on a single machine, where intervals arrive online in an order chosen by an adversary, and the algorithm must output a set of non-conflicting intervals. Traditionally in scheduling theory, it is assumed that intervals arrive in order of increasing start times. We drop that assumption and allow for intervals to arrive in any possible order. We call this variant any-order interval selection (AOIS). We assume that some online acceptances can be revoked, but a feasible solution must always be maintained. For unweighted intervals and deterministic algorithms, this problem is unbounded. Under the assumption that there are at most $k$ different interval lengths, we give a simple algorithm that achieves a competitive ratio of $2k$ and show that it is optimal amongst deterministic algorithms, and a restricted class of randomized algorithms we call memoryless, contributing to an open question by Adler and Azar 2003; namely whether a randomized algorithm without access to history can achieve a constant competitive ratio. We connect our model to the problem of call control on the line, and show how the algorithms of Garay et al. 1997 can be applied to our setting, resulting in an optimal algorithm for the case of proportional weights. We also discuss the case of intervals with arbitrary weights, and show how to convert the single-length algorithm of Fung et al. 2014 into a classify and randomly select algorithm that achieves a competitive ratio of 2k. Finally, we consider the case of intervals arriving in a random order, and show that for single-lengthed instances, a one-directional algorithm (i.e. replacing intervals in one direction), is the only deterministic memoryless algorithm that can possibly benefit from random arrivals.
We present efficient algorithms for Quantile Join Queries, abbreviated as %JQ. A %JQ asks for the answer at a specified relative position (e.g., 50% for the median) under some ordering over the answers to a Join Query (JQ). Our goal is to avoid materializing the set of all join answers, and to achieve quasilinear time in the size of the database, regardless of the total number of answers. A recent dichotomy result rules out the existence of such an algorithm for a general family of queries and orders. Specifically, for acyclic JQs without self-joins, the problem becomes intractable for ordering by sum whenever we join more than two relations (and these joins are not trivial intersections). Moreover, even for basic ranking functions beyond sum, such as min or max over different attributes, so far it is not known whether there is any nontrivial tractable %JQ. In this work, we develop a new approach to solving %JQ. Our solution uses two subroutines: The first one needs to select what we call a "pivot answer". The second subroutine partitions the space of query answers according to this pivot, and continues searching in one partition that is represented as new %JQ over a new database. For pivot selection, we develop an algorithm that works for a large class of ranking functions that are appropriately monotone. The second subroutine requires a customized construction for the specific ranking function at hand. We show the benefit and generality of our approach by using it to establish several new complexity results. First, we prove the tractability of min and max for all acyclic JQs, thereby resolving the above question. Second, we extend the previous %JQ dichotomy for sum to all partial sums. Third, we handle the intractable cases of sum by devising a deterministic approximation scheme that applies to every acyclic JQ.