The task of the broadcast problem is, given a graph G and a source vertex s, to compute the minimum number of rounds required to disseminate a piece of information from s to all vertices in the graph. It is assumed that, at each round, an informed vertex can transmit the information to at most one of its neighbors. The broadcast problem is known to NP-hard. We show that the problem is FPT when parametrized by the size k of a feedback edge-set, or by the size k of a vertex-cover, or by k=n-t where t is the input deadline for the broadcast protocol to complete.
This paper discusses the problem of efficiently solving parity games where player Odd has to obey an additional 'strong transition fairness constraint' on its vertices -- given that a player Odd vertex $v$ is visited infinitely often, a particular subset of the outgoing edges (called live edges) of $v$ has to be taken infinitely often. Such games, which we call 'Odd-fair parity games', naturally arise from abstractions of cyber-physical systems for planning and control. In this paper, we present a new Zielonka-type algorithm for solving Odd-fair parity games. This algorithm not only shares 'the same worst-case time complexity' as Zielonka's algorithm for (normal) parity games but also preserves the algorithmic advantage Zielonka's algorithm possesses over other parity solvers with exponential time complexity. We additionally introduce a formalization of Odd player winning strategies in such games, which were unexplored previous to this work. This formalization serves dual purposes: firstly, it enables us to prove our Zielonka-type algorithm; secondly, it stands as a noteworthy contribution in its own right, augmenting our understanding of additional fairness assumptions in two-player games.
Robust distributed learning with Byzantine failures has attracted extensive research interests in recent years. However, most of existing methods suffer from curse of dimensionality, which is increasingly serious with the growing complexity of modern machine learning models. In this paper, we design a new method that is suitable for high dimensional problems, under arbitrary number of Byzantine attackers. The core of our design is a direct high dimensional semi-verified mean estimation method. Our idea is to identify a subspace first. The components of mean value perpendicular to this subspace can be estimated via gradient vectors uploaded from worker machines, while the components within this subspace are estimated using auxiliary dataset. We then use our new method as the aggregator of distributed learning problems. Our theoretical analysis shows that the new method has minimax optimal statistical rates. In particular, the dependence on dimensionality is significantly improved compared with previous works.
Semi-definite programs represent a frontier of efficient computation. While there has been much progress on semi-definite optimization, with moderate-sized instances currently solvable in practice by the interior-point method, the basic problem of sampling semi-definite solutions remains a formidable challenge. The direct application of known polynomial-time algorithms for sampling general convex bodies to semi-definite sampling leads to a prohibitively high running time. In addition, known general methods require an expensive rounding phase as pre-processing. Here we analyze the Dikin walk, by first adapting it to general metrics, then devising suitable metrics for the PSD cone with affine constraints. The resulting mixing time and per-step complexity are considerably smaller, and by an appropriate choice of the metric, the dependence on the number of constraints can be made polylogarithmic. We introduce a refined notion of self-concordant matrix functions and give rules for combining different metrics. Along the way, we further develop the theory of interior-point methods for sampling.
We study the query complexity of geodesically convex (g-convex) optimization on a manifold. To isolate the effect of that manifold's curvature, we primarily focus on hyperbolic spaces. In a variety of settings (smooth or not; strongly g-convex or not; high- or low-dimensional), known upper bounds worsen with curvature. It is natural to ask whether this is warranted, or an artifact. For many such settings, we propose a first set of lower bounds which indeed confirm that (negative) curvature is detrimental to complexity. To do so, we build on recent lower bounds (Hamilton and Moitra, 2021; Criscitiello and Boumal, 2022) for the particular case of smooth, strongly g-convex optimization. Using a number of techniques, we also secure lower bounds which capture dependence on condition number and optimality gap, which was not previously the case. We suspect these bounds are not optimal. We conjecture optimal ones, and support them with a matching lower bound for a class of algorithms which includes subgradient descent, and a lower bound for a related game. Lastly, to pinpoint the difficulty of proving lower bounds, we study how negative curvature influences (and sometimes obstructs) interpolation with g-convex functions.
Recently Chen and Poor initiated the study of learning mixtures of linear dynamical systems. While linear dynamical systems already have wide-ranging applications in modeling time-series data, using mixture models can lead to a better fit or even a richer understanding of underlying subpopulations represented in the data. In this work we give a new approach to learning mixtures of linear dynamical systems that is based on tensor decompositions. As a result, our algorithm succeeds without strong separation conditions on the components, and can be used to compete with the Bayes optimal clustering of the trajectories. Moreover our algorithm works in the challenging partially-observed setting. Our starting point is the simple but powerful observation that the classic Ho-Kalman algorithm is a close relative of modern tensor decomposition methods for learning latent variable models. This gives us a playbook for how to extend it to work with more complicated generative models.
The Independent Cutset problem asks whether there is a set of vertices in a given graph that is both independent and a cutset. Such a problem is $\textsf{NP}$-complete even when the input graph is planar and has maximum degree five. In this paper, we first present a $\mathcal{O}^*(1.4423^{n})$-time algorithm for the problem. We also show how to compute a minimum independent cutset (if any) in the same running time. Since the property of having an independent cutset is MSO$_1$-expressible, our main results are concerned with structural parameterizations for the problem considering parameters that are not bounded by a function of the clique-width of the input. We present $\textsf{FPT}$-time algorithms for the problem considering the following parameters: the dual of the maximum degree, the dual of the solution size, the size of a dominating set (where a dominating set is given as an additional input), the size of an odd cycle transversal, the distance to chordal graphs, and the distance to $P_5$-free graphs. We close by introducing the notion of $\alpha$-domination, which allows us to identify more fixed-parameter tractable and polynomial-time solvable cases.
This paper deals with the problem of numerically computing the roots of polynomials $p_k(x)$, $k=1,2,\ldots$, of degree $n=2^k-1$ recursively defined by $p_1(x)=x+1$, $p_k(x)=xp_{k-1}(x)^2+1$. An algorithm based on the Ehrlich-Aberth simultaneous iterations complemented by the Fast Multipole Method, and by the fast search of near neighbors of a set of complex numbers, is provided. The algorithm has a cost of $O(n\log n)$ arithmetic operations per step. A Fortran 95 implementation is given and numerical experiments are carried out. Experimentally, it turns out that the number of iterations needed to arrive at numerical convergence is $O(\log n)$. This allows us to compute the roots of $p_k(x)$ up to degree $n=2^{24}-1$ in about 16 minutes on a laptop with 16 GB RAM, and up to degree $n=2^{28}-1$ in about one hour on a machine with 256 GB RAM. The case of degree $n=2^{30}-1$ would require higher memory and higher precision to separate the roots. With a suitable adaptation of FMM to the limit of 256 GB RAM and by performing the computation in extended precision (i.e. with 10-byte floating point representation) we were able to compute all the roots in about two weeks of CPU time for $n=2^{30}-1$. From the experimental analysis, explicit asymptotic expressions of the real roots of $p_k(x)$ and an explicit expression of $\min_{i\ne j}|\xi_i^{(k)}-\xi_j^{(k)}|$ for the roots $\xi_i^{(k)}$ of $p_k(x)$ are deduced. The approach is extended to classes of polynomials defined by a doubling recurrence.
In recent years, computer networks and telecommunications in general have been shifting paradigms to adopt software-centric approaches. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is one of such paradigms that centralizes control and intelligent applications can be defined on top of this architecture. The latter enables the definition of the network behavior by means of software. In this work, we propose an approach for Flow Admission and Routing under Minimal Security Constraints (FARSec) in Software Defined Networks, where network flows must use links which are at least as secure as their required security level. We prove that FARSec can find feasible paths that respect the minimum level of security for each flow. If the latter is not possible FARSec rejects the flow in order not to compromise its security. We show that the computational complexity of the proposed approach is polynomial. Experimental results with semi-random generated graphs confirm the efficiency and correctness of the proposed approach. Finally, we implement the proposed solution using OpenFlow and ONOS -- an SDN open-source controller. We validate its functionality using an emulated network with various security levels.
The field of fine-grained complexity aims at proving conditional lower bounds on the time complexity of computational problems. One of the most popular assumptions, Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH), implies that SAT cannot be solved in $2^{(1-\epsilon)n}$ time. In recent years, it has been proved that known algorithms for many problems are optimal under SETH. Despite the wide applicability of SETH, for many problems, there are no known SETH-based lower bounds, so the quest for new reductions continues. Two barriers for proving SETH-based lower bounds are known. Carmosino et al. (ITCS 2016) introduced the Nondeterministic Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (NSETH) stating that TAUT cannot be solved in time $2^{(1-\epsilon)n}$ even if one allows nondeterminism. They used this hypothesis to show that some natural fine-grained reductions would be difficult to obtain: proving that, say, 3-SUM requires time $n^{1.5+\epsilon}$ under SETH, breaks NSETH and this, in turn, implies strong circuit lower bounds. Recently, Belova et al. (SODA 2023) introduced the so-called polynomial formulations to show that for many NP-hard problems, proving any explicit exponential lower bound under SETH also implies strong circuit lower bounds. We prove that for a range of problems from P, including $k$-SUM and triangle detection, proving superlinear lower bounds under SETH is challenging as it implies new circuit lower bounds. To this end, we show that these problems can be solved in nearly linear time with oracle calls to evaluating a polynomial of constant degree. Then, we introduce a strengthening of SETH stating that solving SAT in time $2^{(1-\varepsilon)n}$ is difficult even if one has constant degree polynomial evaluation oracle calls. This hypothesis is stronger and less believable than SETH, but refuting it is still challenging: we show that this implies circuit lower bounds.
Knowledge graphs capture structured information and relations between a set of entities or items. As such they represent an attractive source of information that could help improve recommender systems. However existing approaches in this domain rely on manual feature engineering and do not allow for end-to-end training. Here we propose knowledge-aware graph neural networks with label smoothness regularization to provide better recommendations. Conceptually, our approach computes user-specific item embeddings by first applying a trainable function that identifies important knowledge graph relationships for a given user. This way we transform the knowledge graph into a user-specific weighted graph and then applies a graph neural network to compute personalized item embeddings. To provide better inductive bias, we use label smoothness, which assumes that adjacent items in the knowledge graph are likely to have similar user relevance labels/scores. Label smoothness provides regularization over edge weights and we prove that it is equivalent to a label propagation scheme on a graph. Finally, we combine knowledge-aware graph neural networks and label smoothness and present the unified model. Experiment results show that our method outperforms strong baselines in four datasets. It also achieves strong performance in the scenario where user-item interactions are sparse.