The main problem in the area of property testing is to understand which graph properties are \emph{testable}, which means that with constantly many queries to any input graph $G$, a tester can decide with good probability whether $G$ satisfies the property, or is far from satisfying the property. Testable properties are well understood in the dense model and in the bounded degree model, but little is known in sparse graph classes when graphs are allowed to have unbounded degree. This is the setting of the \emph{sparse model}. We prove that for any proper minor-closed class $\mathcal{G}$, any monotone property (i.e., any property that is closed under taking subgraphs) is testable for graphs from $\mathcal{G}$ in the sparse model. This extends a result of Czumaj and Sohler (FOCS'19), who proved it for monotone properties with finitely many obstructions. Our result implies for instance that for any integers $k$ and $t$, $k$-colorability of $K_t$-minor free graphs is testable in the sparse model. Elek recently proved that monotone properties of bounded degree graphs from minor-closed classes that are closed under disjoint union can be verified by an approximate proof labeling scheme in constant time. We show again that the assumption of bounded degree can be omitted in his result.
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.
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.
Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are notoriously complex and hard to verify. In fact, it is not trivial to model a MAS, and even when a model is built, it is not always possible to verify, in a formal way, that it is actually behaving as we expect. Usually, it is relevant to know whether an agent is capable of fulfilling its own goals. One possible way to check this is through Model Checking. Specifically, by verifying Alternating-time Temporal Logic (ATL) properties, where the notion of strategies for achieving goals can be described. Unfortunately, the resulting model checking problem is not decidable in general. In this paper, we present a verification procedure based on combining Model Checking and Runtime Verification, where sub-models of the MAS model belonging to decidable fragments are verified by a model checker, and runtime monitors are used to verify the rest. Furthermore, we implement our technique and show experimental results.
Recently, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been applied for scheduling jobs over clusters, achieving better performance than hand-crafted heuristics. Despite their impressive performance, concerns remain over whether these GNN-based job schedulers meet users' expectations about other important properties, such as strategy-proofness, sharing incentive, and stability. In this work, we consider formal verification of GNN-based job schedulers. We address several domain-specific challenges such as networks that are deeper and specifications that are richer than those encountered when verifying image and NLP classifiers. We develop vegas, the first general framework for verifying both single-step and multi-step properties of these schedulers based on carefully designed algorithms that combine abstractions, refinements, solvers, and proof transfer. Our experimental results show that vegas achieves significant speed-up when verifying important properties of a state-of-the-art GNN-based scheduler compared to previous methods.
In this paper we propose a methodology to accelerate the resolution of the so-called "Sorted L-One Penalized Estimation" (SLOPE) problem. Our method leverages the concept of "safe screening", well-studied in the literature for \textit{group-separable} sparsity-inducing norms, and aims at identifying the zeros in the solution of SLOPE. More specifically, we derive a set of \(\tfrac{n(n+1)}{2}\) inequalities for each element of the \(n\)-dimensional primal vector and prove that the latter can be safely screened if some subsets of these inequalities are verified. We propose moreover an efficient algorithm to jointly apply the proposed procedure to all the primal variables. Our procedure has a complexity \(\mathcal{O}(n\log n + LT)\) where \(T\leq n\) is a problem-dependent constant and \(L\) is the number of zeros identified by the tests. Numerical experiments confirm that, for a prescribed computational budget, the proposed methodology leads to significant improvements of the solving precision.
Category theory can be used to state formulas in First-Order Logic without using set membership. Several notable results in logic such as proof of the continuum hypothesis can be elegantly rewritten in category theory. We propose in this paper a reformulation of the usual set-theoretical semantics of the description logic $\mathcal{ALC}$ by using categorical language. In this setting, ALC concepts are represented as objects, concept subsumptions as arrows, and memberships as logical quantifiers over objects and arrows of categories. Such a category-theoretical semantics provides a more modular representation of the semantics of $\mathcal{ALC}$ and a new way to design algorithms for reasoning.
We provide a decision theoretic analysis of bandit experiments. The setting corresponds to a dynamic programming problem, but solving this directly is typically infeasible. Working within the framework of diffusion asymptotics, we define suitable notions of asymptotic Bayes and minimax risk for bandit experiments. For normally distributed rewards, the minimal Bayes risk can be characterized as the solution to a nonlinear second-order partial differential equation (PDE). Using a limit of experiments approach, we show that this PDE characterization also holds asymptotically under both parametric and non-parametric distribution of the rewards. The approach further describes the state variables it is asymptotically sufficient to restrict attention to, and therefore suggests a practical strategy for dimension reduction. The upshot is that we can approximate the dynamic programming problem defining the bandit experiment with a PDE which can be efficiently solved using sparse matrix routines. We derive the optimal Bayes and minimax policies from the numerical solutions to these equations. The proposed policies substantially dominate existing methods such as Thompson sampling. The framework also allows for substantial generalizations to the bandit problem such as time discounting and pure exploration motives.
Let $m$ be a positive integer and $p$ a prime. In this paper, we investigate the differential properties of the power mapping $x^{p^m+2}$ over $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$, where $n=2m$ or $n=2m-1$. For the case $n=2m$, by transforming the derivative equation of $x^{p^m+2}$ and studying some related equations, we completely determine the differential spectrum of this power mapping. For the case $n=2m-1$, the derivative equation can be transformed to a polynomial of degree $p+3$. The problem is more difficult and we obtain partial results about the differential spectrum of $x^{p^m+2}$.
Multi-class classification problems often have many semantically similar classes. For example, 90 of ImageNet's 1000 classes are for different breeds of dog. We should expect that these semantically similar classes will have similar parameter vectors, but the standard cross entropy loss does not enforce this constraint. We introduce the tree loss as a drop-in replacement for the cross entropy loss. The tree loss re-parameterizes the parameter matrix in order to guarantee that semantically similar classes will have similar parameter vectors. Using simple properties of stochastic gradient descent, we show that the tree loss's generalization error is asymptotically better than the cross entropy loss's. We then validate these theoretical results on synthetic data, image data (CIFAR100, ImageNet), and text data (Twitter).
Given a matrix $A$ and vector $b$ with polynomial entries in $d$ real variables $\delta=(\delta_1,\ldots,\delta_d)$ we consider the following notion of feasibility: the pair $(A,b)$ is locally feasible if there exists an open neighborhood $U$ of $0$ such that for every $\delta\in U$ there exists $x$ satisfying $A(\delta)x\ge b(\delta)$ entry-wise. For $d=1$ we construct a polynomial time algorithm for deciding local feasibility. For $d \ge 2$ we show local feasibility is NP-hard. As an application (which was the primary motivation for this work) we give a computer-assisted proof of ergodicity of the following elementary 1D cellular automaton: given the current state $\eta_t \in \{0,1\}^{\mathbb{Z}}$ the next state $\eta_{t+1}(n)$ at each vertex $n\in \mathbb{Z}$ is obtained by $\eta_{t+1}(n)= \text{NAND}\big(\text{BSC}_\delta(\eta_t(n-1)), \text{BSC}_\delta(\eta_t(n))\big)$. Here the binary symmetric channel $\text{BSC}_\delta$ takes a bit as input and flips it with probability $\delta$ (and leaves it unchanged with probability $1-\delta$). We also consider the problem of broadcasting information on the 2D-grid of noisy binary-symmetric channels $\text{BSC}_\delta$, where each node may apply an arbitrary processing function to its input bits. We prove that there exists $\delta_0'>0$ such that for all noise levels $0<\delta<\delta_0'$ it is impossible to broadcast information for any processing function, as conjectured in Makur, Mossel, Polyanskiy (ISIT 2021).