Heged\H{u}s's lemma is the following combinatorial statement regarding polynomials over finite fields. Over a field $\F$ of characteristic $p > 0$ and for $q$ a power of $p$, the lemma says that any multilinear polynomial $P\in \F[x_1,\ldots,x_n]$ of degree less than $q$ that vanishes at all points in $\{0,1\}^n$ of Hamming weight $k\in [q,n-q]$ must also vanish at all points in $\{0,1\}^n$ of weight $k + q$. This lemma was used by Heged\H{u}s (2009) to give a solution to \emph{Galvin's problem}, an extremal problem about set systems; by Alon, Kumar and Volk (2018) to improve the best-known multilinear circuit lower bounds; and by Hrube\v{s}, Ramamoorthy, Rao and Yehudayoff (2019) to prove optimal lower bounds against depth-$2$ threshold circuits for computing some symmetric functions. In this paper, we formulate a robust version of Heged\H{u}s's lemma. Informally, this version says that if a polynomial of degree $o(q)$ vanishes at most points of weight $k$, then it vanishes at many points of weight $k+q$. We prove this lemma and give three different applications.
We formulate the quadratic eigenvalue problem underlying the mathematical model of a linear vibrational system as an eigenvalue problem of a diagonal-plus-low-rank matrix $A$. The eigenvector matrix of $A$ has a Cauchy-like structure. Optimal viscosities are those for which $trace(X)$ is minimal, where $X$ is the solution of the Lyapunov equation $AX+XA^{*}=GG^{*}$. Here $G$ is a low-rank matrix which depends on the eigenfrequencies that need to be damped. After initial eigenvalue decomposition of linearized problem which requires $O(n^3)$ operations, our algorithm computes optimal viscosities for each choice of external dampers in $O(n^2)$ operations, provided that the number of dampers is small. Hence, the subsequent optimization is order of magnitude faster than in the standard approach which solves Lyapunov equation in each step, thus requiring $O(n^3)$ operations. Our algorithm is based on $O(n^2)$ eigensolver for complex symmetric diagonal-plus-rank-one matrices and fast $O(n^2)$ multiplication of linked Cauchy-like matrices.
We consider the question of adaptive data analysis within the framework of convex optimization. We ask how many samples are needed in order to compute $\epsilon$-accurate estimates of $O(1/\epsilon^2)$ gradients queried by gradient descent, and we provide two intermediate answers to this question. First, we show that for a general analyst (not necessarily gradient descent) $\Omega(1/\epsilon^3)$ samples are required. This rules out the possibility of a foolproof mechanism. Our construction builds upon a new lower bound (that may be of interest of its own right) for an analyst that may ask several non adaptive questions in a batch of fixed and known $T$ rounds of adaptivity and requires a fraction of true discoveries. We show that for such an analyst $\Omega (\sqrt{T}/\epsilon^2)$ samples are necessary. Second, we show that, under certain assumptions on the oracle, in an interaction with gradient descent $\tilde \Omega(1/\epsilon^{2.5})$ samples are necessary. Our assumptions are that the oracle has only \emph{first order access} and is \emph{post-hoc generalizing}. First order access means that it can only compute the gradients of the sampled function at points queried by the algorithm. Our assumption of \emph{post-hoc generalization} follows from existing lower bounds for statistical queries. More generally then, we provide a generic reduction from the standard setting of statistical queries to the problem of estimating gradients queried by gradient descent. These results are in contrast with classical bounds that show that with $O(1/\epsilon^2)$ samples one can optimize the population risk to accuracy of $O(\epsilon)$ but, as it turns out, with spurious gradients.
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.
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.
This paper presents new deterministic and distributed low-diameter decomposition algorithms for weighted graphs. In particular, we show that if one can efficiently compute approximate distances in a parallel or a distributed setting, one can also efficiently compute low-diameter decompositions. This consequently implies solutions to many fundamental distance based problems using a polylogarithmic number of approximate distance computations. Our low-diameter decomposition generalizes and extends the line of work starting from [Rozho\v{n}, Ghaffari STOC 2020] to weighted graphs in a very model-independent manner. Moreover, our clustering results have additional useful properties, including strong-diameter guarantees, separation properties, restricting cluster centers to specified terminals, and more. Applications include: -- The first near-linear work and polylogarithmic depth randomized and deterministic parallel algorithm for low-stretch spanning trees (LSST) with polylogarithmic stretch. Previously, the best parallel LSST algorithm required $m \cdot n^{o(1)}$ work and $n^{o(1)}$ depth and was inherently randomized. No deterministic LSST algorithm with truly sub-quadratic work and sub-linear depth was known. -- The first near-linear work and polylogarithmic depth deterministic algorithm for computing an $\ell_1$-embedding into polylogarithmic dimensional space with polylogarithmic distortion. The best prior deterministic algorithms for $\ell_1$-embeddings either require large polynomial work or are inherently sequential. Even when we apply our techniques to the classical problem of computing a ball-carving with strong-diameter $O(\log^2 n)$ in an unweighted graph, our new clustering algorithm still leads to an improvement in round complexity from $O(\log^{10} n)$ rounds [Chang, Ghaffari PODC 21] to $O(\log^{4} n)$.
The multiplicity Schwartz-Zippel lemma asserts that over a field, a low-degree polynomial cannot vanish with high multiplicity very often on a sufficiently large product set. Since its discovery in a work of Dvir, Kopparty, Saraf and Sudan [SIAM J. Comput., 2013], the lemma has found numerous applications in both math and computer science; in particular, in the definition and properties of multiplicity codes by Kopparty, Saraf and Yekhanin [J. ACM, 2014]. In this work, we show how to algorithmize the multiplicity Schwartz-Zippel lemma for arbitrary product sets over any field. In other words, we give an efficient algorithm for unique decoding of multivariate multiplicity codes from half their minimum distance on arbitrary product sets over all fields. Previously, such an algorithm was known either when the underlying product set had a nice algebraic structure: for instance, was a subfield (by Kopparty [ToC, 2015]) or when the underlying field had large (or zero) characteristic, the multiplicity parameter was sufficiently large and the multiplicity code had distance bounded away from $1$ (Bhandari, Harsha, Kumar and Sudan [STOC 2021]). In particular, even unique decoding of bivariate multiplicity codes with multiplicity two from half their minimum distance was not known over arbitrary product sets over any field. Our algorithm builds upon a result of Kim and Kopparty [ToC, 2017] who gave an algorithmic version of the Schwartz-Zippel lemma (without multiplicities) or equivalently, an efficient algorithm for unique decoding of Reed-Muller codes over arbitrary product sets. We introduce a refined notion of distance based on the multiplicity Schwartz-Zippel lemma and design a unique decoding algorithm for this distance measure. On the way, we give an alternate analysis of Forney's classical generalized minimum distance decoder that might be of independent interest.
The stochastic gradient Langevin Dynamics is one of the most fundamental algorithms to solve sampling problems and non-convex optimization appearing in several machine learning applications. Especially, its variance reduced versions have nowadays gained particular attention. In this paper, we study two variants of this kind, namely, the Stochastic Variance Reduced Gradient Langevin Dynamics and the Stochastic Recursive Gradient Langevin Dynamics. We prove their convergence to the objective distribution in terms of KL-divergence under the sole assumptions of smoothness and Log-Sobolev inequality which are weaker conditions than those used in prior works for these algorithms. With the batch size and the inner loop length set to $\sqrt{n}$, the gradient complexity to achieve an $\epsilon$-precision is $\tilde{O}((n+dn^{1/2}\epsilon^{-1})\gamma^2 L^2\alpha^{-2})$, which is an improvement from any previous analyses. We also show some essential applications of our result to non-convex optimization.
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).
For a given nonnegative matrix $A=(A_{ij})$, the matrix scaling problem asks whether $A$ can be scaled to a doubly stochastic matrix $XAY$ for some positive diagonal matrices $X,Y$. The Sinkhorn algorithm is a simple iterative algorithm, which repeats row-normalization $A_{ij} \leftarrow A_{ij}/\sum_{j}A_{ij}$ and column-normalization $A_{ij} \leftarrow A_{ij}/\sum_{i}A_{ij}$ alternatively. By this algorithm, $A$ converges to a doubly stochastic matrix in limit if and only if the bipartite graph associated with $A$ has a perfect matching. This property can decide the existence of a perfect matching in a given bipartite graph $G$, which is identified with the $0,1$-matrix $A_G$. Linial, Samorodnitsky, and Wigderson showed that a polynomial number of the Sinkhorn iterations for $A_G$ decides whether $G$ has a perfect matching. In this paper, we show an extension of this result: If $G$ has no perfect matching, then a polynomial number of the Sinkhorn iterations identifies a Hall blocker -- a certificate of the nonexistence of a perfect matching. Our analysis is based on an interpretation of the Sinkhorn algorithm as alternating KL-divergence minimization (Csisz\'{a}r and Tusn\'{a}dy 1984, Gietl and Reffel 2013) and its limiting behavior for a nonscalable matrix (Aas 2014). We also relate the Sinkhorn limit with parametric network flow, principal partition of polymatroids, and the Dulmage-Mendelsohn decomposition of a bipartite graph.
In 1954, Alston S. Householder published Principles of Numerical Analysis, one of the first modern treatments on matrix decomposition that favored a (block) LU decomposition-the factorization of a matrix into the product of lower and upper triangular matrices. And now, matrix decomposition has become a core technology in machine learning, largely due to the development of the back propagation algorithm in fitting a neural network. The sole aim of this survey is to give a self-contained introduction to concepts and mathematical tools in numerical linear algebra and matrix analysis in order to seamlessly introduce matrix decomposition techniques and their applications in subsequent sections. However, we clearly realize our inability to cover all the useful and interesting results concerning matrix decomposition and given the paucity of scope to present this discussion, e.g., the separated analysis of the Euclidean space, Hermitian space, Hilbert space, and things in the complex domain. We refer the reader to literature in the field of linear algebra for a more detailed introduction to the related fields.